Dakota Johnson Discusses Her Directorial Debut Loser Baby at TIFF with Talia Bernstein

At this year’s Toronto International Film Festival, actress, producer, and now director Dakota Johnson presented her short film Loser Baby with writer, star, and good friend Talia Bernstein. Johnson took her experience on the sets of other directors’ films — “all different kinds of direction and methods of direction“ — and applied it to her own, where she and Bernstein worked with all of their best friends on a short film she never intended to premiere at TIFF. “I don’t know what we’re doing here, honestly,“ Johnson laughs, admitting that their friend and Loser Baby’s producer, Ro Donnelly, submitted the short without either of them knowing. The surprise turned out to be a smart move when the 23-minute queer comedy was accepted and celebrated its world premiere at the festival. Bernstein, who’s penned episodes for popular series like Fresh Off the Boat and Ghosts, says she wrote the script about “a very real depiction of gay relationships, and very specifically of gay people in their mid-thirties, where they’re not young and crazy anymore, but they’re not older and have their life figured out.“ Johnson and Bernstein stopped by the Collider media studio at the Cinema Center at MARBL to discuss the film with Steve Weintraub. The duo shares what it was like to improvise on set with their friends, how it felt to find out they were heading to the festival, and what their futures look like as far as directing and acting again. Bernstein talks about working on Ghosts and How I Met Your Mother, and Johnson teases her upcoming projects with Oscar-nominee Celine Song and Mike Covino. #dakotajohnson #loserbaby #TaliaBernstein For interviews, movie reviews, and more visit FOLLOW US ON SOCIAL