Where was Daddio filmed? Shooting location of Dakota Johnson and Sean Penn movie explored 

Dakota Johnson has teamed up with Sean Penn for a one-of-its-kind movie, titled Daddio. The movie sees the two characters, played by Johnson and Penn, making a connection during a cab ride, driving around New York. The whole movie is filmed inside a cab that goes through the long winding streets of New York.

Belonging to two different generations, Daddio explores how two people with very different life experiences and belonging to very different backgrounds, connect to talk about everything under the sun. The movie brings viewers a rich narrative of perspectives on different themes such as technology, human nature, affairs, love, and of course, New York.

---

Was Daddio shot inside a cab? Shooting locations explored

Daddio features Sean Penn, the two-time Oscar winner as an observant taxi driver named Clark who picks up a passenger, Girlie, (Dakota Johnson's character) at John F. Kennedy Airport in Queens. Girlie's destination is 44th Street between Ninth and 10th Avenues in Manhattan and as Clark drives her, he strikes up an unusual conversation with his passenger.

Daddio was primarily filmed at Cinelease Studios in Jersey City. Instead of filming in a moving vehicle, Oscar-nominated cinematographer Phedon Papamichael filmed the actors Johnson and Penn on the soundstage in a car cut in half. LED “walls” with screens were used, which played footage of the real route through which the cab traveled in the story.

Some of the shootings also took place on city streets in Hudson County in 2022. If one is familiar with the streets, they can spot Route 1 across from County Road in Jersey City as well as Garden Street in Hoboken.

---

About Daddio: Plot cast and more

Daddio is written and directed by Christy Hall, a playwright. For Hall, Daddio was inspired by the TV Taxicab Confessions which she used to watch as a child.

Talking about her inspiration, as reported by Marine Independent Journal, she said:

“I have to bring it up because I used to sneak downstairs in my childhood home. I was too young to be watching but I would watch it and I was absolutely riveted. I grew up in the Midwest, so at that point in my life, New York didn’t feel like a real place. It might as well have been Gotham City, you know what I mean?

"Like, it didn’t feel like an actual place, it felt like someplace in the movies but it wasn’t real. But when I watched ‘Taxicab Confessions,’ It gave me a feeling like, ‘Oh, New York is a real place with incredible people and characters and of all walks of life from all over the world.”

Hall moved to New York City in 2008 to pursue a career in theater and for her, the movie is a "love letter to New York.”

---

What is the movie about?

Daddio opens with Clark picking up Girlie at JFK when she returns after spending several weeks at home in Oklahoma, away from her life in Manhattan as a coder. She is returning to Manhattan after a life-changing moment in Oklahoma, where she had to confront her past as well as her present where she is with an older, married man who texts her periodically throughout the cab ride. As the duo strikes up a conversation, intimacy begins between them.

Talking about her character, Dakota Johnson said, according to the Marine Independent Journal:

“So I think in the beginning, she’s guarded. She lives in New York. She’s probably been hit on by many a cab driver. But there’s something that’s not that. At times, there’s the thing that’s igniting for her and inspiring for her and interesting for her. It goes through all these different dynamics.

"A brother-sister dynamic and a father-daughter dynamic. And is it sexual? Is it dangerous? Is it creepy? It never remains one thing for any time for very long.”

The movie stars Johnson and Penn in the lead roles of Girlie and her cab driver Clark, respectively. It also features Marcos A. Gonzalez as Taxi Line Attendant, as well as Zola Lloyd and Shannon Gannon in minor roles.

---

Daddio is coming to theaters this Friday, 28 June 2024.