Dakota Johnson and Riley Keough have been friends for half their lives — and their connection keeps deepening as they get older.
“It was like finding a soulmate,” Johnson, 33, told Vanity Fair in a cover story published Tuesday, August 8, adding that she met Keough, 34, in an In-N-Out parking lot when they were 16. “When I met her, I felt this thing that is so impossible to articulate, growing up in a famous family. There was this solidarity. Understanding.”
Like Keough, Johnson knows what it’s like to have everyone at school know who your parents — and grandparents — are. Johnson is the daughter of Melanie Griffith and Don Johnson and the granddaughter of Tippi Hedren, while Keough is the daughter of Lisa Marie Presley and Danny Keough and granddaughter of Elvis Presley and Priscilla Presley.
According to Dakota, Griffith, 66, and the late Lisa Marie were more than willing to support their daughters’ budding friendship. “We would just smoke cigarettes with our moms. And they’d call each other and be like, ‘I guess she’s going to stay with you for the next four days. Call me if she needs a ride,’” Dakota recalled. “I’d go to Riley’s and then leave a week later. I don’t know if that’s normal, but, yeah, just running around L.A., sharing clothes, smelling like Nag Champa. Most of it involved music festivals and dating musicians, of course.”
Riley is currently nominated for an Emmy for her performance in Daisy Jones & The Six, but Dakota claims that she’s actually the one who discovered her friend’s talent for music.
“When we were 19, we started a joke band called Folky Porn,” Dakota recalled. “Riley and I both had blond hair. We were hiding out in New York after breakups. We would do three-part harmonies with my brother, Alexander, on Hank Williams songs and John Prine songs, and we’d film them on Photo Booth. Thousands and thousands of takes.”
Those videos may be lost to time now, but Riley admitted that she’d rather go on tour with Folky Porn than The Six, if given the chance.
Dakota isn’t the only famous friend that Riley has met through a parental connection. She’s also close with Zoë Kravitz, who is the only child of Lisa Bonet and Lenny Kravitz. According to Zoë, the duo have known each other since they were infants.
“I think consistency is the thing that I’ve always appreciated about Riley,” Zoë told the magazine. “No matter what situation we’re in, no matter what crowd we’re in, she’s the same person. I’ve never questioned her integrity.”
