Ana says "I expect you to call me Ana. I don't expect you to fetch me coffee unless you're getting some for yourself, and um, the rest we'll just make up as we go along." Melanie Griffith, Dakota Johnson's mother, said the same thing in Working Girl (1988).
Dakota Johnson revealed that for their pre-game ritual before filming sex scenes, she and Jamie Dornan would do different things. She said she would have a glass of whiskey and Dornan would do push-ups. Dornan said they also always had a private conversation among themselves to work out the scene between them, in addition to the director's instruction.
Jamie Dornan joked that he did not like doing too many scenes with co-star Eric Johnson who plays his romantic rival in the film because Johnson is "too tall" and doesn't make him look too good.
Jamie Dornan's character Christian Grey is supposed to be in extraordinary physical shape in the film but Dornan revealed that they did not want to do a standard workout scene to show that, adding that just showing him lifting weights would be boring and they wanted to make the scene more interesting. So Dornan volunteered to do a gymnastics yoga pose for the film, something that he could already do in real life. The gymnastics pose consisted of balancing his entire body by just holding his wrists onto a pommel horse and holding his body straight with the feet up in the air and the head slanting down. As part of the promotion for the film, Dornan appeared on the late night talk show Conan and performed the feat live for the studio audience.
Sam Taylor-Johnson, who directed the predecessor Fifty Shades of Grey (2015), refused to consider returning for the sequel. She cited frequent clashes with author E.L. James, who had received final approval on everything from the studio, as a source of much frustration. She was replaced by James Foley, who stated to have a "great relationship" with the author, and therefore returned for the second sequel Fifty Shades Freed (2018).