An excellent adventure

Keanu Reeves and China Mieéville talk about their literary bromance and their quest toturna pulpy idea’ into something deeper

- Sam Leith

KEANU REEVES has a reputation to maintain as one of the nicest, humblest guys on the Hollywood A-list, and maintain it he does. Grizzled of beard, spiky of hair, in a V-neck T-shirt under a dark suit teamed, oddly, with chunky brown hiking boots, it's Reeves - rather than the anticipated team of flunkies - who sets about moving side tables and pouring everyone glasses of water as we begin our interview in a London hotel.

He's here with the writer China Miéville to talk about their collaboration on Reeves's first novel, The Book of Elsewhere, and he does the humble guy thing again almost immediately after the interview begins. Very early on, he says categorically: "I didn't want to write the book. I wanted another creator to take that journey. So, ultimately, China has written the novel. It's not, like, we could look at page eight and say, 'Oh, I wrote this section.' I didn't write any of the novel."

As Reeves describes it, the collaboration began when the two met face-to-face in Berlin in 2021 - "pure luck," says Miéville, "that we happened to be in the same city at the time" - and it was the star courting the writer, rather than the other way round. Were you starstruck? "Practically, yeah!" says the actor, who has reportedly been paid more per movie than anyone else in history. It is the superhero team-up nobody had on their bingo cards. But their collaboration seems to have turned into a full-blown bromance.