Dakota Johnson makes cannibal joke about Armie Hammer in Sundance speech

Actress Dakota Johnson made a biting joke about disgraced star Armie Hammer, who was accused of having sent sexually explicit messages containing cannibalistic fantasies amid a slew of other allegations, during a Thursday evening tribute to the star's Call Me by Your Name director Luca Guadagnino at the Sundance Film Festival.

"It was here at Sundance in 2017 that audiences experienced a film that is uniquely characterized by Luca's iconic approach to storytelling, the vision, and the style that is Call Me by Your Name," Johnson said while honoring the filmmaker as he received the festival's International Icon Award at the Taste of Sundance event. "Sadly, I wasn't in that one. It was unfortunate. Luca had asked me to play the role of the peach, but our schedules conflicted. Thank God, though, because then I would've been another woman that Armie Hammer tried to eat."

As seen in a video published by Variety (below), the audience responded to the joke — which referenced a scene from the queer romance in which Timothée Chalamet's character uses a peach to masturbate while thinking about his father's live-in assistant (Hammer) — with a mix of nervous laughter, applause, and groans.

Johnson, who worked with Guadagnino on 2015's A Bigger Splash and 2018's Suspiria, continued, seemingly transitioning to a discussion about the Italian director's 2022 cannibal love story, Bones and All.

"It's been five years since that film premiered here, and Luca hasn't stopped taking us to exciting places," she said. "Who knew that cannibalism was so popular?"

Though he gained critical and audience favor with movies like The Social Network, The Lone Ranger, The Man from U.N.C.L.E., and Call Me by Your Name, Hammer's Hollywood career came to a halt after he was accused of engaging in disturbing sexual discussions with women who said they'd been in relationships with him — claims he called "bulls---" at the time.

Michael Loccisano/Getty Images; Sony Pictures Classics Dakota Johnson made a cannibalism joke about Armie Hammer at Sundance.

A woman identified only as Effie accused him of rape and other physical abuse in March 2021. Hammer denied the allegations, and his attorney, Andrew Brettler, told EW at the time that Effie's "own correspondence with Mr. Hammer undermines and refutes her outrageous allegations. As recently as July 18, 2020, [she] sent graphic texts to Mr. Hammer telling him what she wanted him to do to her. Mr. Hammer responded making it clear that he did not want to maintain that type of relationship with her."

Guadagnino said he would "love to make a second and third and fourth chapter" to his movies in a November 2022 Variety interview, including a Call Me by Your Name continuation involving Hammer's character, if the opportunity came up. However, he clarified that a sequel was not in production and his remarks were merely "a wish and a desire."

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