Celebrities! They’re just like us! Their children, on the other hand, maybe less so. It’s The Hanks Effect; how Hollywood’s nicest person Tom could raise red-carpet-Patois-speaking Chet is truly a mystery (Colin seems nice though). Thus is the duality of actor and noted child of famous people Melanie Griffith and Don Johnson, Dakota Johnson, who has been alleged to like drinking specialty coffee (one of us!) but maybe also locked an entire cafe in the store when she wasn’t allowed to play barista.
I’ll give you a second to parse out that last bit, there’s a lot going on.
As reported this week by Vulture, one Twitter user alleges that back in 2016, the 50 Shades of Grey star trapped customers inside a New York City Blue Bottle Coffee by tying a rope around the exterior doors. (If you will grant me but one quick dad joke: it was bound to happen.) According to user @biz_socks, the incident occurred after a “barista told [Johnson] she couldn’t make the coffee herself,” adding in a later tweet that she “closed the door on all of us who were still inside, pulled a rope out of her bag, tied the doors shut, and walked away. We had to have a passerby untie the rope so we could get out.”
True Story: Dakota Johnson once locked me and my Mom inside a Blue Bottle Coffee shop because the barista told her she couldn’t make the coffee herself. https://t.co/AVNdGKU8SP
— Asscela Express (@biz_socks) January 23, 2022
And while this is truly a far-fetched tale of celebrities acting a fool, another Twitter user—who used to work at that very Blue Bottle—made similar claims. User @benimacbamf alleges that “one time she came into my coffee shop at milk studios at like 11 am, walked behind the counter and started pretending that she was making drinks while her people tied the front doors shut from the outside and started filming her.” He then goes on to detail some other rather unkind interactions between his coworker and Johnson, which with all the fatphobia and cursing we won’t be reprinting, but you can find it in the Twitter thread.
I hate seeing Dakota Johnson trending because one time she came into my coffee shop at milk studios at like 11am, walked behind the counter and started pretending that she was making drinks while her people tied the front doors shut from the outside and started filming her.
— Laplace's Demon Barber of Fleet Street (@benimacbamf) October 9, 2021
When reached for comment about the interaction, @biz_socks, referred to as just LJ in the article, notes that Johnson’s alleged strange behavior may have something to do with Vogue video shoot she was doing at around that time. In the video, the actor is playing some sort of over-the-top famous person lacking a shred of self-awareness and it was perhaps in acting out this character that Johnson did some light hostage-taking. It is here that I cannot help but note that locking workers and customers in a cafe as part of a bit is itself an act of someone lacking self-awareness; no one wants to be inconvenienced for your schtick.
Truly it is a wild tale of caffeine, revenge, and bondage, ripped straight from EL James’s next 50 Shades installment, 49 Shades of Grey And 1 That’s Blue. It’s one of the most bizarre celebrity interactions we’ve ever come across, but we’re certain that have been even stranger interactions and we very much want to hear about them. So if you’ve had an utterly strange encounter with a celebrity at a coffee shop, head over to @Sprudge on Twitter and dish! Inquiring minds want to know.
Zac Cadwalader is the managing editor at Sprudge Media Network and a staff writer based in Dallas. Read more Zac Cadwalader on Sprudge.