The last of her kind: An interview with Joan Collins
Joan Collins is an international treasure — and no one is more aware of that than Joan Collins. Which is perfect: This is what we want and expect from someone who is the physical embodiment of a certain kind of glamor.
She’s also deft at navigating an interview, and all the accompanying faux pas on my part. After a series of miscommunications about the timing with her various agents, I finally connected with Dame Collins, who insisted I call her Joan.
“Why are you late?” Her voice was kind and refined, posh and grandmotherly at the same time. I was being admonished, and I was thrilled (also slightly terrified). I knew how devastating her reprimands could be, as I had been streaming television episodes and films featuring Ms. Collins for at least a week.
I apologized immediately, despite the fact that I’d spent the better part of the previous hour thinking she had stood me up. (I was okay with this, as “I was stood up by Joan Collins” is still a story worth telling.) Her rebuke over, Ms. Collins quickly reassured me I was fine, forever perfect in her manners and a consummate hostess.
And even at the age of 90, there’s no indication Joan Collins plans to slow down. She could only give me a few minutes, as she had guests coming over — “a small party” on a Monday evening.
Hollywood secrets
The occasion of our interview was her newest memoir, “Behind the Shoulder Pads” (Permuted Press, $30). I say “newest” because it’s also her eighth memoir, depending on how you categorize her many books (she’s written almost twenty of them!).
There’s a lot of information already available on Ms. Collins, including eight official biographies by other writers. So one might wonder why an eighth memoir is
necessary, especially only two years after the U.S. publication of “My Unapologetic Diaries.”
“Behind the Shoulder Pads” is not a traditional memoir, though. It’s organized thematically, touching on various anecdotes and small moments (and, she says, secrets) in Ms. Collins’s life. Here, she tries to fill in everything her biographies and other memoirs left out.
The secrets are fun. They range from titillating Hollywood gossip (her sister, famous writer Jackie Collins, going upstairs at a party with a famous celebrity when they were young) to the inconveniences of the glamorous life (haggling with flood insurance agents). Certain narrative through-lines emerge — nostalgia and sadness for her many peers who have passed away, and the love story between her and
her fifth-and-current husband Percy Gibson, whom she adores.
Joan and Percy
In one chapter, detailing their meet cute, Ms. Collins brings Mr. Gibson to the page directly. This is an unusual move in a memoir, allowing two different writers to take on the same topic. But the result is interesting, the kind of thing I might teach to nonfiction writing students. In presenting both sides of their romance, certain inconsistencies emerge by allowing Mr. Gibson’s voice to interject into the story.
“It was the publisher’s idea,” she told me. But she found it delightful, and she was right. The juxtaposition creates a charming portrait of them as a couple. And while he is 31 years her junior, it’s clear they cherish one another.
Mr. Gibson writes about being in awe of Ms. Collins from the moment they met. But he particularly admires her work ethic. I’m a big fan of memoirs that discuss the work — being glamorous and talented might seem easy, but it’s the work that pays off. And Ms. Collins works hard.
She is a professional, of course. Even now, she’s passionately working on a biopic of Wallis Simpson, who is much maligned in Ms. Collins’s opinion. And Ms. Collins cares about what she puts out into the world. Someone who cared less would not be interested in writing eight memoirs.
Friend-dropping
“Did you like the book?” I was caught off guard when she asked me that. Of course Ms. Collins was curious how people perceive her writing, but I’d assumed that someone as famous and sophisticated as she is would care very little about my ordinary opinion.
“I did, and as I told a friend, even the name-dropping is—” I was going to say “an important history of Hollywood,” but I never got the chance.
“Now, it’s unfair to call it name-dropping. It’s not namedropping! That’s not right to say. I was friends with all those people. They aren’t just names.”
She went on to discuss how well she knew Elizabeth Taylor, Marlon Brando and Dodi Fayed. To her, they were not celebrities. “They were my friends.”
And there was a sadness in her voice as she admonished me again. In her 90 years on this planet, she’s buried many, including her sister and too many of her colleagues, acquaintances and lovers. She’s seen the evolution of fame (“Fred Astaire used to be able to just walk down the street!”) and how children are treated (“far from my Edwardian childhood!”). She has no patience for someone like me calling her a name-dropper.
She was right, of course. And thankfully, she could not throw a glass of champagne at me through Zoom.