Dakota Johnson told a provocative joke about Armie Hammer at Sundance Institute’s Opening Night: A Taste of Sundance, presented by IMDbPro, in Park City, Utah, on Jan. 19. The 33-year-old actress presented the icon award to Luca Guadagnino, the director of Call Me By Your Name, during the event to kick off the Sundance Film Festival in 2023. Johnson’s remarks cited Call Me By Your Name, a film starring Timothée Chalamet and Armie Hammer that the 51-year-old filmmaker directed. “Sadly, I wasn’t in that one. It was unfortunate,” she said, joking that she might have been able to play the peach that Chalamet’s character, Elio, pleasures himself with and leaves on his desk. Though Oliver, Hammer’s character in the film, finds the peach, he does not eat it, as he does in the novel on which the movie is based.
“Luca had asked me to play the role of the peach but our schedules conflicted,” Johnson said before referencing Hammer’s cannibalism allegations. “Thank God though because then I would’ve been another woman that Armie Hammer tried to eat.” In addition, she mentioned Guadagnino’s recent film Bones and All, which stars Chalamet. “It’s been five years since [Call Me By Your Name] premiered [at Sundance] and Luca hasn’t stopped taking us to exciting places. Who knew cannibalism was so popular?” Johnson remarked. Despite Johnson’s sarcastic remarks, she had defended Hammer and a few other controversial male co-stars, such as Johnny Depp and Shia LaBeouf, in the past. Johnson starred alongside Hammer in the 2010 film The Social Network. “I never experienced that firsthand from any of those people,” she told The Hollywood Reporter in 2021. “I had an incredible time working with them; I feel sad for the loss of great artists. I feel sad for people needing help and perhaps not getting it in time. I feel sad for anyone who was harmed or hurt. It’s just really sad. I do believe that people can change.”
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In January 2021, alleged direct Instagram messages of Hammer alleged that he was a cannibal. According to Hammer’s accusers, he talked about devouring their body parts. “He said to me he wants to break my rib and barbecue and eat it,” Courtney Vucekovich told Page Six. “He says, ‘I want to take a bite out of you.’ If I had a little cut on my hand, he’d, like, suck it or lick it. That’s about as weird as we got.” Paige Lorenze said in an interview with Vanity Fair in March 2021 that “he would say things to me…weird stuff…like, ‘I want to eat your ribs.’ “The scariest part of it is that I did love him in a way,” she added. “I would’ve let him kind of do anything. He had a certain hold over me.” As his lawyer has stated, the 36-year-old actor denies any wrongdoing and insisted that all of his relationships were consensual.
