Actress Reese Witherspoon has described finding herself at number one in The New York Times bestsellers list as "pretty surreal".
Withersoon made these comments alongside her co-writer Harlan Corben, whose collaboration, Gone Before Goodbye, which was released earlier this month, reached number one. Corben is one of the most successful authors in the world, having sold over 80 million books so far.
The book is centred around a talented surgeon who becomes embroiled in a deadly conspiracy.
While Corben would have a plethora of experience in the field, this is new territory for Witherspoon, despite having a hugely successful production company, which is responsible for a string of huge hits.
Despite this, Witherspoon was determined to try her hand at writing.
"People want you to stay in your lane… as a creative person I think it's impossible to just choose one kind of life", the Legally Blonde star said. "Creativity is infinite and who I was as a creative person when I was 20 is very different from the person I am now at 49".
On this, Corben joked: "I was texting her last night and saying you'll now have to call yourself number one bestselling novelist, forget about Oscar winner!".
Initially, Harlan Corben admitted that he was "a little wary at first".
"I don't co-write novels but when she made the pitch and started talking about it, I was like 'dang that's good, we can do something with that'", he explained.
He continued: "I said to her from day one 'it's only going to be you and me in here… no third person in here, I don't do that'. So every word you [read] comes from Reese and me".
Witherspoon added: "He was like 'if we're going to do this, it's going to have to be at a really high level because people going to expect a lot, so our bar was really high".
"I said to her, in the beginning, novels are like a sausage," Coben laughs. "You might like the final taste, but you don't want to see how it was made and Reese got to see the full sausage getting made here".
On the subject of writing, Corben said the pair "fell into a rhythm right away", working together in three-hour stints, "back and forth with a yellow legal pad - what about this? What about that?"
Elsewhere, Reese Witherspoon described having her work published in print as "deeply personal".
She said: "Usually, as an actor, I walk into other people's worlds and it's already set up… but this was creating the whole world with Harlan and just from beginning to end feels very personal".
Given Witherspoon's favourable reputation on screen, you could be forgiven for thinking that this book has the hallmarks of being adapted into a screen play. However, Harlan Corben insists this was never the intention when they started this project.
"The biggest, biggest mistake novelists make when you write a book is to say 'this would make a really great movie'. A book is a book, a movie is a movie, and we both focused on wanting this to be just a great reading experience", stated Corben.
On the possibility of the pair joining forces on a second project, Witherspoon remarked: "Let's just see what people think of this one first".
Last week, Reese Witherspoon paid tribute to her "first mentor" Diane Keaton, who passed away this month aged 79. More on this here.
