In a span of nearly a decade, James sold more than 15 million copies of the hit book.
E.L. James has come to a stunning realization about Christian Grey in the midst of writing the sequel to her 2019 romance novel, The Mister -- she finds Grey "utterly exhausting."
Speaking to Today.com to promote her new book, The Missus, James compared her male protagonist in Fifty Shades of Grey to the male protagonist in The Mister, Maxim Trevelyan, described as a newly-minted Earl who unexpectedly falls in love with his housecleaner, Alessia Demachi.
Yes, there's a stark difference between Christian and Maxim. James, who said she came up with The Mister after wanting "a break" from Christian and Anastasia Steele, says she always thinks of Ana and Christian as Beauty and the Beast. And with Maxim and Alessia, their love story's more like Cinderella.
And, while describing their differences, James shared how she truly feels about Christian.
"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," James told Today.com. "I just find Christian mentally exhausting. Physically exhausting. Utterly exhausting. Maxim is much more reasonable."
The Missus, which hit bookstores on Tuesday, is James' follow-up to The Mister, a 512-page book about an English nobleman's love dilemma set in modern-day London.
Though it was described as "a 21st-century Cinderella," James still had juicy details and provided "lots" of steamy moments throughout the book.
Utterly exhausting or not, there's no denying Christian Grey made James -- whose real name is Erika Mitchell -- a household name after selling more than 150 million copies of her Fifty Shades trilogy.
Her 2011 Fifty Shades of Grey novel was later adapted into a film, and the runaway hit erotic novel went on to have two sequels in 2012 -- Fifty Shades Darker and Fifty Shades Freed -- as well as two retellings of the books from Grey's perspective: Grey (2015) and Darker (2017). Dakota Johnson and Jamie Dornan portrayed the main characters in the three films based on the books.
Following all the success, James told Today.com that, after finding fame, her day-to-day life isn't all that different.
"I just have more than one house," she quipped. "We dip into that kind of life and it's lovely, but we're still the same people. Success came late. It's very unexpected. And my kids have kept me grounded."
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