How a Men's Magazine Would Profile Christian Grey
In Fifty Shades Freed, a character remarks that she "loved [Christian Grey's] profile in GQ" and that she's impressed with "the work [he's] doing in Africa." This is an approximation of what a profile writer for any publication could possibly get out of a feature on Christian Grey.
I want you to know that I pitched four activities for this profile of Seattle billionaire Christian Grey and he only agreed to one. Skydiving was my first thought - Chris Evans went skydiving - but despite Grey’s well-documented affinity for zipping around the sky in tiny aircraft, he declined. Lunch then, at a restaurant, Miles Teller style? He wasn’t feeling it. Let’s race cars! It will be fun. His publicist said he’d rather meet at his apartment. I took what I could get.
To arrive at Christian Grey’s sky-high Seattle penthouse, one must allow for a pat-down, walk through a metal detector, endure an elevator ride so interminable it makes your ears pop, and finally step across the threshold into the Realm of Grey. The man himself is seated on a black couch in the center of the largest room in the universe, a dark sun in a solar system of bachelor-pad-furniture planets, in a suit, looking like an aftershave commercial is being filmed invisibly around him. To be in the presence of Christian Grey is to feel inadequacy unlike anything else I’ve experienced in my life. He speaks with a tone that would terrify Caesar and make Ozymandias bend the knee; I looked upon his works and did despair.
His works, by the way, are many and lucrative. As the founder and CEO of Grey Enterprises Holdings, Inc. he does "stuff." There are mergers and acquisitions, and ... systems development? Reader, I got nothin’. I was briefed on the nature of Mr. Grey’s massive fortune but no one in the history of men’s magazines has actually been interested in how the men of our time make their money. It’s far more interesting to learn how they spend it, and dream of what we would do differently had we their talent for mergers, acquisitions, and the development of useful systems. What matters is that Christian Grey is the modern Croesus, and I have a deadline.
As I settle onto a black couch more expensive than my parents’ house, I attempt a joke about how dark furniture makes a room look smaller. I expect him to laugh and he does not. “Black hides the stains,” he remarks with his cold, dark eyes boring a hole through the glass of my Warby Parkers. “What stains?” I ask gamely, hoping for a juicy story. He stares again. I get the impression that Grey is used to conveying a lot of human dialogue with only his eyes, but all the silence does is turn his answer into a Mad Lib for my brain. Tea stains. Blood stains. Oil paints? Sex stuff? This profile would go viral if I could prove it was sex stuff, but I can’t.
This isn’t to say that Christian Grey is a bad host. As we move through the small-talk part of our conversation, I’m struck with how affable he can be. This man, who has never once smiled in a picture, is somehow charming! Charming in the way that those advanced robot prototypes are charming. The ones with the rubbery faces and glossy wigs who do a wonderful job of approximating human conversation and leave you feeling impressed until you jokingly ask it when the world is going to end and it says something like “once my children are fully grown” - then the room goes silent and the press conference is over and you’re left with a feeling of awe and dread and an urge to call your mother. That sentence got away from me. Christian Grey is not a robot.
I know he is not a robot because robots don’t have hobbies or fiancées, and Christian Grey has both. For his hobbies he names philanthropy and long, character-building drives on winding roads. Mr. Grey’s philanthropy, of course is legendary, and I ask him to elaborate on the work he does in (at this point I consulted my notes) Africa. Could he speak as to where in Africa he is doing said work and what it entails?
“Grey Enterprises Holdings, Inc. is proud of our work in Africa. It feels good to make a difference.”
I make a great show of writing down “making...a...difference...in...Africa.”
How about the long, character-building drives? What is it about driving down winding forest roads while blasting contemporary pop hits that makes him feel like he’s building character?
“I spend a lot of my time in cars, driving them, being driven by other people. With the right contemporary pop hit and the right person in the car with you, I find it’s easy to learn enough about a person to substitute what it takes most people weeks or months to know.”
It’s his reference to "the right person" that gives me the segue to the real reason I’m here. “And you have found the right person to drive with, haven’t you? Your engagement to Seattle Independent Press's Fiction Editor Anastasia Steele was front-page news a month ago. How did you two meet?"
Mr. Grey’s cheeks do something resembling the side-parts of a smile. “No comment.”
“Can you comment on your company’s recent acquisition of SIP as a part of Grey Enterprises Holdings, Inc.’s publishing division?”
More silence. More Mad Libs!
“Would you like a house tour?”
You know what? Sure.
Onto the house tour. Grey leads me around the perimeter of his open-concept palace of an apartment, speaking briefly of his decorator, who I won’t even plug because you can’t afford her. There's a piano chilling out near the dining area but at this point I know better than to ask if he plays or if it’s simply decoration. It takes a bit of prodding for him to lead me upstairs, but he obliges. Bedroom. Second bedroom. Bathroom the size of my first and second apartments combined, and a locked white door.
“What’s behind the door?" I ask, expecting a workout room or a study.
Mr. Grey keeps walking down the hallway, leaving me standing in front of the mysterious potral. “Sex dungeon,” he answers casually. Sure it is, buddy.
By the time we get back downstairs his publicist is waiting for us. “Mr. Grey, your two o'clock is waiting at the office. “I’m not fini–” is all I can get out before a large man ushers me towards the elevator. I had questions prepared about his helicopter crash and his boat. People without boats love reading about boats.
“Thank you for your time, Mr. Grey. I’ll let you know when the profile is - ” and the doors slide closed. The man who half-dragged me into the elevator has his hand hovering around my elbow, as if he’s prepared to grab me if I make a run for the four feet between myself and the elevator walls. Just like that, I am released into the lobby of the Escala building and back into the real world, where the apartments are small, the couches stay stained, and Christian Grey is just a distant figure silhouetted against a window in the Seattle skyline.
I really should have pushed back and insisted we go skydiving.
