Growing up in the shadow of her father's unbridled passion for James Bond films, Reese Witherspoon was inexorably drawn to the 007 franchise. Yet, her curious mind always wondered: why do the girls always wear bikinis, and what does that have to do with solving a crime? This curiosity led the Oscar-winning actress and now novelist to create a thriller centered around a woman with a unique skill, rather than her sex appeal.
Witherspoon, now 49, is best known for her roles in Legally Blonde and The Morning Show, but she has now penned her first adult fiction book, Gone Before Goodbye, co-written with bestselling author Harlan Coben. The story revolves around a talented surgeon named Maggie, trapped in a deadly conspiracy.
As Witherspoon spoke exclusively to BBC News, she admitted her initial worries: "Oh God, why did I do this?" But she also felt thrilled to see her idea come to life. Her influence on the book club she runs, which has picked hits like Where the Crawdads Sing, is evident.
Witherspoon's background as a daughter of a medical doctor father and a nurse mother likely inspired the characters in her new novel. "I grew up in a medical military family and on a military base, surrounded by other parents who were medical military people," she says. "There was this sense of service, and that what they were doing was an important service to humanity, but also to their country."
In Gone Before Goodbye, Maggie has lost her medical license after a series of tragedies but is given a lifeline by a former colleague. The theme of career setbacks is familiar to Witherspoon, who starred in a string of poorly received films in the years after her Oscar win and her 2008 divorce from Ryan Phillippe.
When asked if her personal experience of a career setback inspired the book's plotline, Witherspoon says, "I think every great story has a character who is taken to their knees. We just happen to start the story with her on her knees." She adds that it was "a great place to start" because "it can really only go up from there."
Witherspoon's acting career has bounced back, and through her production company Hello Sunshine, she has made a point of celebrating strong female characters through films and TV series like The Morning Show and Big Little Lies, which she produced and starred in.
Asked how rare it is to see a female character like Maggie who is not about her sex appeal but rather about her particular skillset, Witherspoon replies, "Growing up, I always saw James Bond movies, but I was like, why are [the girls] all in bikinis, and I don't understand what that's got to do with solving the crime." She continues, "If I was going to do a thriller, I wanted the woman to be at the center of it. I wanted her to have a unique skillset that everyone in the world would want, but she didn't even realize it. And she doesn't have to shoot guns or punch bad guys; she's just very smart and very intuitive and an incredible surgeon."
However, Witherspoon believes that the film industry still has further to go in creating such roles for women. She says, "I always see the gap, I see the white space." She started Hello Sunshine in 2011 because she wasn't seeing complex storytelling for women in the movie space. "So, in a way, I was just taking the relationships I've had from 30 years of being an actor and helping shine a light on women who were ready for those opportunities."
Entertainment journalist Lauren Morris believes Witherspoon has been "quite clever" in the way she's built her business empire. "She has her book club where she publicizes books often centering female stories," Morris says. "Then she has her production company where she adapts it for TV or film and often stars in it herself. It's a good business model and it's working well for her."
Witherspoon and Coben insist that their collaboration on Gone Before Goodbye was not just a matter of one author using a ghostwriter or co-author; they were both deeply involved in the writing process to the point that Witherspoon says "we couldn't figure out who wrote what." Several of Coben's books have recently been adapted for the small screen with Fool Me Once becoming one of Netflix's most-watched dramas last year. So will Gone Before Goodbye get the same treatment? Coben answers yes with a smile when asked if he is thinking about Witherspoon for the role of Maggie.
