Dakota Fanning explains why she got into a catfight with her sister Elle on movie set
Working with family has its ups and downs. Dakota Fanning and Elle Fanning can attest to that.
The sisters just wrapped their first movie together: The Nightingale, an adaptation of Kristin Hannah’s novel of the same name.
While appearing on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon on Tuesday, August 11, Dakota spilled some of the rules she and Elle agreed upon before they started filming the project.
No ‘older sister behavior’
Dakota admitted they both had their doubts heading into the project — even if neither of them wanted to say it.
“We were very quietly nervous about it. I think we didn’t really want to tell the other one how nervous we were,” Dakota recalled. “It’s the person that knows you the best in the world that you are acting with — and we’re super close.”
Before filming, Elle “made it clear” to Dakota that there would be no “older sister behavior” between them. “I had to treat her like I would treat any other actor — and I did for the most part,” Dakota claimed.
A ‘little tiff’
Everything went pretty smoothly until near the end of the film’s shoot when the sisters had a little spat. Dakota said there was a scene “right towards the end” that caused a catfight with Elle.
“It was this really hot room and we were on this couch. I was like, ‘Move your leg!’ She was like, ‘My leg has been here all day.’ I was like, ‘No, it hasn’t. Get off of me. I’m too hot, you’re sweating on me,’” she recalled. As she explained what happened, Dakota and Jimmy Fallon playfully mimicked a catfight.
“It was the only fight, by the way — quote, unquote ‘fight.’ It was not a fight,” Dakota continued. “The crew was dying because we had kept it so together the whole time and they were dying. It was totally a sister little tiff.”
In the works since 2019
The novel on which the film is based debuted in 2015. It follows two sisters as they struggle to survive in war-torn France. The Fanning siblings first announced their involvement in the film adaptation in 2019.
“The Nightingale will be the first time we act on screen together. We have played the same character at different ages but have never spoken to each other in front of a camera,” Dakota and Elle said at the time. “For years, we have looked for a film to do with one another and then this gem appeared.”
“As sisters, to share our artistry with each other while bringing such a powerful sister story to life is a dream come true. … Let’s do this, sister!!” they added.
‘The unknown’
Production was originally planned for 2020, but the COVID-19 pandemic put the project on pause. In 2025, the film finally got moving again, with Dakota and Elle producing and Michael Morris coming on to direct.
Back in March, Elle shared on the “SmartLess” podcast that she and Dakota were getting ready to start filming.
“It’s about to happen in a month. We have never read a line together,” she said at the time. “We have visited each other on set, but we have never been on camera together other than me playing her young.”
Elle explained that working with her sister felt like “stepping into the unknown.”
“People who have worked with both of us say we work in a very different way, that we are extremely different on set,” she added. “It’s not a bad thing — our energies are very different.”