Fifty Shades Of Grey’s E.L. James Now Has A Brutally Honest Take On Christian Grey, And It Checks Out

Fifty Shades Of Gray 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 Gray 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. Gray, 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.

I would marry Maxim. He’s a reasonable human. I think you’d have to have the patience of a saint to marry someone like Christian. I just found Christian mentally exhausting. physically exhausting. Utterly exhausting. Maxim is much more reasonable.

Look, I got 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 Gray 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.
I always think of Ana and Christian as Beauty and the Beast. The Mister is more like Cinderella.

Christian Gray is a character who was tormented by his early childhood like the Beast was tormented by his “curse.” He channels 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 Gray book and movie is how they make Christian less of a stalker. And while she is typically quite patient when it comes to the gig of being Ms. Gray, 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 part of a rags to riches narrative (though that’s not her motivation), like Cinderella.

Like Fifty Shades of Gray, The Mister’s rights have already been snapped up by the major studios, although 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.

We’ll have to wait and see, but there are doubtless plenty of fans hoping to see Alessia and Maxim on the big screen… or at the very least on the list of sexually explicit Netflix movies. In the meantime, you can always catch up on the Fifty Shades movies streaming.

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Jessica Rawden is Managing Editor at CinemaBlend. She’s been kicked out news stories since 2007 and joined the full-time staff in 2014. She oversees news content, hiring and training for the site, and her areas of expertise include theme parks, rom-coms, Hallmark (especially Christmas movie season) , reality TV, celebrity interviews and primetime. She loves a good animated movie. Jessica has a Masters in Library Science degree from Indiana University, and used to be found behind a reference desk most definitely not shushing people. She now uses those skills in researching and tracking down information in very different ways.