Fifty Shades Of Grey was the best-selling book of the past decade, spawning a series of three Fifty movies that made more than a billion dollars at the box office. Fans can’t get enough of Christian Grey and Anastasia Steele, but if you were to ask author E.L. James herself, she was getting a little tired of her misunderstood hero. In fact she recently shared a brutally honest take on Mr. Grey, and it checks out.
OK, maybe she is more than a little tired. Citing that she “wanted a break from Christian and Ana” as one of the reasons she switched to new characters Maxim and Alessia after Fifty Shades Freed, James recently admitted that her infamous leading man is “exhausting.” His red room scenes may be fun to watch on the big screen, but there’s a lot to unpack when you are one of the creative people on the project.
Look, I get it. Part of the appeal of Fifty Shades is that it allows its audience to have darker and more outside-the-box fantasies about relationships and bedroom interactions. But if you are the person writing those scenes — or performing them on the big screen — it’s not always so fun to be dealing with sometimes emotionally manipulative back and forth. So James’ comments check out, and they are honestly similar to what Jamie Dornan has said about playing Christian Grey in the past.
In the interview with Today about her famous film and book characters, the popular creator also shared that she has always envisioned her famous characters as having taken a page from popular fairytales (or Disney movies if you look at them that way). She noted Ana and Christian is the Beauty and the Beast narrative while her newer characters are a little more tame.
Christian Grey is a character who was tormented by his early childhood like the Beast was tormented by his “curse.” He channeled that pain into naughty bedroom behavior, but he can still be quite controlling and often difficult for Ana to deal with. In fact, one of the major differences between the Fifty Shades of Grey book and movie is how they make Christian less of a stalker. And while she is typically pretty patient when it comes to the gig of being Ms. Grey, Alessia and Maxim don’t have the same background trauma to deal with. Instead, they’re dealing with mafia issues and more while Alessia is a part of a rags to riches narrative (though that’s not her motivation), like Cinderella.
Like Fifty Shades of Grey, The Mister’s rights have already been snapped up by the major studios, though a movie has not moved forward yet. After E.L. James admitted studios were circling her Maxim book in 2019, The Mister was picked up by Universal in 2020, who also optioned the rights to the Fifty movies.
The sequel to that book The Mistress just hit shelves this month, and I almost wonder if this might be a trilogy as well. If that’s true, it may have made sense to wait at least for the second book in the trilogy to come out before greenlighting another series of movies so the studio didn’t end up with a Game of Thrones situation on its hands.
