Dakota Johnson, Tracee Ellis Ross, Janelle Monae and Hong Chau talk of their latest projects and coping with COVID-19

LOS ANGELES — Dakota Johnson, Tracee Ellis Ross, Janelle Monae and Hong Chau recently talked to us on a video call about their latest projects and coping with the pandemic and isolation.

Dakota Johnson and Tracee Ellis Ross, both daughters of celebrities, are both featured in the film, “The High Note.”

Not only does Ross, the daughter of the legendary singer Diana Ross and Robert Ellis Silberstein, sing for the first time in public at age 47 in the movie. She also recorded six original songs for the film and debuted her first song, “Love Myself,” the lead single off the soundtrack of the movie, which she described as simply just appropriate during these challenging times.

Johnson, the 30-year-old daughter of Don Johnson and Melanie Griffith who shot to fame with her portrayal of Anastasia Steele in the erotic “Fifty Shades of Grey” franchise, is featured in the movie as Maggie Sherwood, a personal assistant.

She talked to us while she was in isolation in her Los Angeles house and opened up about having problems sleeping at night, coping with negativity, fighting for things while she was ascending in her career, and sharing some thoughts and feelings about having famous parents.

“The High Note,” a musical comedy-drama film directed by Nisha Ganatra and written by Flora Greeson, follows a famous singer Grace Davis (Ross) and her personal assistant (Johnson) as they try to record a new album.

Meanwhile, actress-singer Janelle Monae (“Moonlight,” “Hidden Figures”), who took over the lead role of no less than Julia Roberts in the new season of the TV series, “Homecoming” admitted that she has a hard time talking to people because it usually makes her more depressed. The talented performer also confessed that she seldom sings at home.

Hong Chau, on the other hand, the Vietnamese-American actress who shot to fame when she was featured in the Matt Damon movie “Downsizing,” is back on the second season of “Homecoming” as wellness guru Audrey Temple. She talked to us about her journey to Hollywood, working with Oscar winners, the state of the pandemic in Vietnam and how she is coping with the COVID-19 and self-isolation.

Below are excerpts of our conversations with the actresses:

Dakota Johnson

Photo courtesy of Janet Susan R. Nepales

In a recent article, you talked about going into dark places because of the situation of the world and that keeps you up all night. What do you do to get all that stuff in check and balance? Do you still have dark thoughts? Is it still hard for you to go through your everyday life? What’s that like?

This time is totally mind-bending for every individual, no matter where you are, where you're from, who you are, and I have difficult days of course. I'm incredibly fortunate to live where I do and have the family and friends that I have but in terms of dealing with the ups and downs of being human every day is different and you just try to do the best you can and be nice to people along the way and sleeping at night, I don't know. I take a lot of Melatonin.

Do you meditate or do yoga to help with anxiety?

I've been doing meditation and yoga for many years and it's so helpful. I'd be totally lost without it. That's a definite life saver. It's a lot better than drinking myself stupid every night which I don't do but that's some peoples' choice. I just think that right now whatever you can do to take care of yourself and the people around you is the best thing you can do.

In the movie, there’s a lot of negativity in the industry. Did you face the same earlier in your career?

It's hard. It's a lot easier when you stay out of the news and out of the way and just, it's a lot of like mosquito noise. When I was growing up, social media didn't exist and that's when I learned about fame. My parents were famous people and it was a really different version of fame. It was very physical. It was very loud. It was very much people and a lot like going places with them in public was scary sometimes.

Now, it's a lot more incognito. People are really sneaky and social media is really sneaky and it's an interesting – it's just a difference and it's hard to wrap your head around that or normalize it in any way because it's not normal.

So I just try to do the best I can and keep my head in my work and make things that hopefully move peoples' hearts and the rest is just the rest.

Did you stand up for the things you wanted as you were ascending in your career?

Yeah, I still do.  All the time, I still do. I don't think that that stops. Women that I admire and other actresses, other filmmakers that I admire, it never ends the fight. It's constant and I don't think that you work your way up to one place and then suddenly that's it and it's all easy.  It's always difficult but if you can be aware of that and be aware that there are peaks and valleys, then you just learn more on the way and maybe you learn. On every movie, every show, every project I've done, I learn so much about what I'm capable of and more aspects of myself so it's ongoing.

You and Tracee have very famous parents. So did you talk about that and how did that influence your life?

We definitely talked about it, yeah. There's a lot that you can say without saying much when it comes to relating to somebody who grew up with a famous parent or, you know, in her case an icon so yeah, we definitely I think recognized each other, recognized ourselves in each other a bit, and it's very complicated and knowing that there's somebody who can understand even a little bit of what that's like is a wonderful feeling.

Tracee Ellis Ross

Photo courtesy of Janet Susan R. Nepales

I want to congratulate you on singing six original songs for the film and also with the lead single “Love Myself” on the soundtrack. Talk about facing your fear of singing and how did you overcome that?

Well, I just dove in. And it was really scary. I think part of it is the fact that I had a dream as a child, and when you put something aside for so long, the fear gets bigger and bigger and bigger.

And I think I came by the fear, honestly, the fact that I had some big shoes, some very high heels to step into because of who my mom is. But then it just turned a corner for me and was less about the fear of it and more about the fact that I was busy with so many other things. 

My acting career was quite successful, I was busy.  And then this role came along and I think it was easy to dive in and to walk through the fear because the role was so wonderful. Grace Davis was a woman that I wanted to inhabit and so it felt worth the risk for me. 

So will this love for life, music and singing be more part of your life and films?

Yeah, I think I'm forever changed. I do I think I'm forever changed. I've let a part of myself out that was hidden away and I am experiencing a new kind of freedom that I'm very grateful for.

My career with “Girlfriends” and then “Black-ish,” I've had great success with those shows and the material has kept me very interested for so many years. So, it took something really special for me to want to make the leap and I was waiting for the right project for film.

If you wait this long, it feels like same thing with a man; If you wait this long, you wait for the right one. So, I pursued this script from the beginning. It felt like it was a combination of so many things that were important to me; the overall message of no matter where you are in your life, in your career, in your experiences, no matter your age, or anything, don't let anyone's idea of you limit you. And if you have a dream, pursue it. It's about women finding their voices, and I loved that this was a movie about two women who are not against each other, but instead ended up being the actual things that support each other.

“Love Myself” is a great single and I still could not believe that this is the first recording. Were you afraid to record?

I was afraid and then it just was no longer a priority for quite some time. I was so busy with the rest of my career. It felt daunting to step into the footsteps of my mother and what could be comparison and judgment.

I was just waiting for the right opportunity and the right time and this was it. It's been so perfect and I'm so glad you mentioned “Love Myself” because the lyrics of that song and the message of the film are so important to me, particularly right now. ”Put down your phone. It doesn't matter what anyone thinks of you like the choices do.” It's about loving yourself. I feel really honored and grateful that all of a sudden, at 47, I got to start at the top instead of having to work my way from the bottom. I got an opportunity to work with some of the best people.

So how many scenes in the movie were similar to the way you grew up with your mom?

Honestly, none of them. I understand the curiosity and the comparison. There's no way there couldn't be you know. But the truth is the character that was on the page from the beginning. Not only did she not remind me of my mom, but it was so well written that there was no reason for me to call on any of that.

The two things I'll say that I borrowed from my mother were that I wore eyelashes, (laughter) fake eyelashes. Which my mom also wears on stage. And I would say that the most challenging thing for me once, I was beyond the fear of singing, I moved through that, it was how was I going to look like if I had been performing on stage for decades? Even though I, Tracee, am comfortable on stage. I'm comfortable on stage using a little comedy to hide behind and all these kinds of things. Grace Davis doesn't hide behind anything. Grace Davis stands in her power when she's on stage. And that doesn't come easily so I kept imagining what I know so well of my mother and how she has an ease and a sense of being at home when she is on stage.

Where are you right now?

I am at home, I am in LA. This blue room is one of my favorite rooms in the house but I never get to see it because I'm always at work. It's one of the most beautiful rooms. The light is so beautiful during the day. I've gotten to spend tons of time in this room. And this is my fiddle leaf fig behind me that I have been making, singing to and talking to every day and she’s thriving. So, I’m in my home in LA.

Has your mom seen the film and are you excited for her to see it?

My mom has not seen the film. We had a family screening scheduled for two days after the lockdown happened. So, that didn't happen. And then last week I asked her if she wanted to see an advance link, if she wanted to try and see that before you know everybody else. And she asked me what I wanted and I said it was really up to her and she said she wanted to wait to see it in the energy when everybody's seeing it almost like going to a premiere. So, she has not seen it yet. I'm so excited for her to see it. No one in my family has seen it because as I said, we were scheduling with friends and family screening. None of my friends have seen it. No one seen it. So, I was so excited. I've actually planned a Zoom party for the Sunday after so that everyone will have a chance to watch and then we can gather and discuss.

Janelle Monae

Photo courtesy of Janet Susan R. Nepales/HFPA

How does it feel to step into the shoes of Julia Roberts?

I feel so thankful that Julia passed the baton to me in a sense and having her on as Executive Producer makes the world. I got an opportunity to tell her this in person. She came on set and Stephan (James) and I had just done this very intense scene and all of a sudden we hear this ahhhh!  And we were like who is that, because it was very quiet on set. And one of the production guys leaned in and was like I think she loves it; that was Julia Roberts.  And we just freaked out.  And that was the highest compliment she could have paid. So she’s an icon. She’s a cinema hero of mine and I am super thankful to be leading Season Two.

So how is it for you now during lockdown? You are lucky that the show got finished before we all got locked down.

I am doing well; my heart goes out to all of my friends and all of the workers who had projects that they were supposed to be doing. I know that financially it’s causing stress and emotional stress because all of us are used to working and connecting and not having that community, taking its toll on you. 

But I am thankful that we still get an opportunity to bring this show to the homes of so many people and there’s a lot of amazing TV out there and one of the things that I am thankful to be a part of is a show like “Homecoming” that is such an outlier and doing something unique in the TV space and just in terms of how it’s shot, the shortness of the episodes, to binge, how worthy it is and the music, the score really drew me in.  And how they zoom in, the nuances and the details and keep us all buried in that suspense with them and on the edge of our seats.  So yeah I just feel thankful that I got a chance to work with this crew and with this cast of actors before the pandemic.

Your character loses her memory. If you were to lose one of your senses, what would it be and why?

If I had to lose one of my senses, wow. I love food. I love being able to hear, especially as a musician. I love being able to see, especially as an actor to see films and cinema.  Touch, I am missing hugs. Smell, I want to smell some food right now. I couldn’t imagine losing that sense. You know, I would want to lose memory, and I think it would be remembering when Donald Trump became President.  (laughs)

How do you exercise your brain and your memory? Do you take vitamins or do some mental exercises?

I think that life, the quality of our life or the lack of quality of our life, is all determined by memories that we make, the memories that we have with loved ones, the good, the bad, the exciting, the ugly, the highs and lows. And I try to make, every memory I don’t take for granted, even the ones that cause pain. And to be able to remember is a blessing, to be able to, to lift through different areas in your life and different seasons and come out triumphant is indeed a blessing. 

And I think that one of the things that I do try and do is record as many memories as possible, have people around me who have better memories than me. I did however go through a period in my life where my memory was a little off while I was filming “Homecoming” because I had gotten high doses of mercury from eating a lot of seafood and I didn’t know. 

I had switched my diet to being a pescatarian and it carried a lot of mercury, because people are — capitalism is killing us (laughs) and because of that there is a lot of mercury in the water, from dumped materials and the carbon that is in the air and all of that. And the fish, they are eating it, they are digesting it, and I am eating it, we are eating it. And I had a really high level and so it affects your nervous system and my memory was off, it was a lot. So a lot of what you see in “Homecoming” is a result of me actually not having a great memory.

In “Antebellum” you are a successful author. What is your relationship to writing? Do you write a lot? Do you have a journal? Do you write to friends?

I actually just wrote, maybe three days ago, a handwritten note, because I have a film company that I just started that I am excited about. It’s called Wondaland Pictures and I hope, I can’t wait for you guys to see what we are trying to do with that company. We want to bring more radical and more rebellious films to cinema and TV. 

And I wrote a handwritten letter to a director. I can’t say who it was, but to a writer/director that I want to work with, and it felt really good.  It felt good to back down to my first love. I love writing. I love English. I love being able to express myself as a writer and growing up I wrote short stories and science-fiction. 

I wrote for the “Coterie Young Playwrights Roundtable” in Kansas City Missouri and if your short story was good enough, the local actors would perform it.  And so as a writer on the music side and as a writer and looking forward to being a director, writing is therapeutic. She who controls the pen controls the narrative.

And you look fashionable today with your hat and all. Who are you wearing today?

Listen, this is a hat because my hair looks really crazy. I don’t even want to show you, which is fine.  I have embraced it. I have just learned to adapt, because if you cannot adapt, you cannot survive.  I think I have on a Tom Brown tie and one of my shirts, I buy in bulk. I am just trying to save money. I wore this shirt yesterday too.  (laughs) And I probably have on some pajama pants under, (laughs) because I am really trying to save on washing and those things.

Coping with this pandemic, do you find yourself talking more to people you haven’t talked to in years? I know Hugh Jackman did that.

Yeah, I talk more. I definitely speak more to my family. We talk more. Sometimes I don’t feel like talking, actually. I found myself not wanting to talk a lot because my relationships that I formed are rooted in the reality pre-pandemic. And I think it makes me sad to think about how we are just not there and I don’t think we are going to go back to what it was. It will be something and I do think that we will find a vaccine and I think scientists are working hard. I think we will get to a day where we can hug each other and have physical contact. But yeah, I think sometimes talking to people is a reminder of the current situation.

During this pandemic, you are also involved with distributing 5,000 free meals in Atlanta. Can you talk more about this project?

Yes this Saturday we are doing it again. We did it once at the beginning of May, or the end of April, and I am partnering up with Project Isaiah, and between 12 to 3pm.

If you look on my socials, you will be able to, or go to “Wondaland” on Instagram and Twitter and you will be able to get an opportunity to reserve your spot. There’s no shame in this, everybody is affected by this pandemic and this is the least that we can do is to help a city and help people who have given me so much love. I started my career in Atlanta, Georgia, so being able to feed them with contact free food, where basically we will put it in your trunk and if you want to walk up, wear your mask, wear your gloves and we will serve you.  But everybody is welcome and I think we are all just realizing that we need each other to get through this for sure.

You mentioned that you don’t want to go back to the studio because the music that you were thinking about before was rooted in the reality before the pandemic. So going through these incredible changes, when do you think you are going back to the studio and what are you waiting for?

Every day I wake up and I feel like I am in some really bad science-fiction film and ready to end. I don’t believe in time like I used to, time is indeed a social construct and things that we make up and you want to be respectful and say when you are going to meet somebody. You meet them at whatever time you guys say you should meet, but a lot of what I believed in prior to this pandemic is being dismantled a little bit. 

And again, music is rooted in the reality that I knew before the pandemic and I think I am just trying to understand where we will be in this and get some solid ground.  And once I can plant my feet in something a little more stable, then I think that I will write.

I do not want to write music about right now and the state that we are in, that is why I am super thankful for the film that I did and the TV show that we are talking about “Homecoming.” It gives me an opportunity to escape and go somewhere else for a little bit.  So that is kind of where I am putting my energy and putting my energy in trying to help as a citizen.  Yeah, I am just like, this time has just shown up in a different way and I think we are all feeling that.  You are just trying to make sense of reality.

Hong Chau

Photo courtesy of Janet Susan R. Nepales/HFPA

Your life must have changed a lot after “Downsizing.” Can you talk about that journey from there until now and how has your life changed?

It has been an incredible journey. “Downsizing” was the second movie I had ever done. It was my first time doing press at that level. I did I think 6 months of press for that film and I don't know if I could have done it had I not loved the film as much as I did. 

That experience taught me so much about how the narrative around the film can be almost as instructive as the film itself so I really feel that how we talk about the film matters a lot whereas I don't think I quite realized that when I was first doing press for “Downsizing.” 

I've gotten some amazing opportunities since “Downsizing.”  Because it was such a wonderful role that demanded so much of me as an actor, I think people were able to see that I had a lot of range and that's why I was asked to join “Homecoming.” 

The 2 roles could not be any more different and yet when I met with Sam Esmail and the writers, Micah Bloomberg and Eli Horowitz they had all seen “Downsizing” and that's why they were interested in meeting me for the role of Audrey Temple.

It was really lucky that this was already in the can when the lockdown all started happening. Where are you isolating?

I'm here in Los Angeles. I feel really grateful to be in California because I'm looking at other parts of the country where maybe their state and local officials aren't taking the pandemic as seriously and not taking public health this seriously so I'm very glad that I'm here in California and that we have people who are following the advice of scientists and doctors.

Talk about your experience working with Oscar winner Julia Roberts and now with Janelle Monae?

Oh, actually I'm working with another Oscar winner Chris Cooper (laughs), and an Academy Award nominee Joan Cusack so I have a wealth of talented and prestigious actors that I've been able to work with. 

I think that Janelle is also a star, just like Julia Roberts is a star. I think they both bring very different qualities to their roles. I remember being very surprised that when they told me that Janelle was coming onboard to do that role of Jackie, I don't know how many episodes you've seen of the second season but I think that people will be very surprised to see her playing a role like that.

Your character is a wellness guru in the organization. How are you keeping yourself physically and mentally well during these challenging times?

I think surprisingly I've been very calm. I think the feeling that really carries throughout the day for me is just the feeling of being grateful. I'm grateful that I'm healthy, that my family is healthy. 

Prior to the pandemic, I think I might have been feeling some sort of anxiety about work and career and what is my next job, what am I going to do. We don't know when the industry is going to open back up. That is a complete unknown. There are so many people who are putting their heads together and trying to figure out how we can open things back up safely and the actuality is no one really knows until there's a vaccine or until there's really comprehensive testing and equipment and that comes in for people to be able to work safely. 

I just don't know how that's going to happen and yet, at the same time, I don't feel anxious about it. I don't feel a sense of heaviness or sadness. I think it's because I'm looking at people who are what we're calling essential workers right now and they're out there and they do have to work and it's when you think about the difference between wanting to go to work because it's something that you enjoy and that it's almost a luxury. I think when you compare that to people who are going to work because they absolutely have to I think it really changes your perspective.

Your character ascended to the corporate ladder fast. How good are you as a leader or do you see yourself more as a follower?

I think that as I've gotten older, I'm much better at handling curve balls or disappointments and I'm able to actually talk through my feelings now as opposed to maybe when I was younger.

I would be upset or disappointed by something but not really be able to articulate what I was feeling and when you're unable to articulate what you're feeling it's very unproductive so you end up just sitting and stewing in your feelings. You have to be able to say what you're feeling. You have to tell the other person how you feel like the both of you can move forward or improve the situation and that is something that just takes experience and takes practice and takes time and maturity.

So I feel like now that I've gotten the opportunity to work with people who I really admire and respect and who I feel are at the top of their game, at what they do, I feel like I'm learning so much from watching them and seeing how they are able to have a conversation with somebody that results in something really productive as opposed to people having hurt feelings. I'm really looking forward to not only acting more but potentially producing and developing projects and that's just something where my interest is naturally going. — LA, GMA News