After selling more than 500 million books, author Jackie Collins didn't feel pressured to change the way she wrote the sex scenes in her newest page-turner just because of a certain other British novelist known for her more aggressive style.
“My women kick butt. They don’t get their butt kicked, you know?” she told TODAY’s Matt Lauer as she discussed her newest book, “The Power Trip,” released Tuesday.
Collins said she thought E.L. James “did a great job” with her book, “50 Shades of Grey,” but said she never felt the need to resort to bondage and other types of eroticism used in that book.
Read an excerpt: Jackie Collins turns up the heat in 'The Power Trip'
“I don’t think that I’ve changed the sexual scenes at all,” she said, attributing some of her success to her ability to write strong female characters.
“Yeah, I write sex because people’s imaginations take over at a certain point, and they like erotic sex and they like strong women. But I don’t want my women to get beaten up and tied up and all of that. That’s not for my characters.”
“The Power Trip” is Collins' 29th book. It features a Russian billionaire who invites five “power couples” on his yacht cruise, where they indulge in days of extravagant living until Somali pirates raid their ship.
Collins played coy when asked whether any of her characters were based on real-life individuals. Lauer noted the book’s 50-something, commitment-phobic movie star, voted "Sexiest Man Alive,” had striking similarities to a certain well-known celebrity.
“Does it rhyme with Splorge Flooney?” he asked.
“It could be any of them,” Collins responded. “It could be Ryan Gosling. It could be Bradley Cooper — it could be any of them.”
Collins then noted she also loves writing about television news anchors.
“I’ve written two talk show hosts, both based slightly on you,” Collins told Lauer, who quickly changed to subject to the author’s latest project, an autobiography.
“It’s called ‘Reform School of Hollywood,’ which is what my parents told me when I was thrown out of school,” she said.
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