Reese Witherspoon Convinced Harlan Coben to ‘Collaborate’ on a Novel (Excl)

Reese Witherspoon can get anyone to do anything — just ask author Harlan Coben.

“It’s such a braggy story,” Coben, 63, joked to Us Weekly exclusively about the inception of his novel with Witherspoon, Gone Before Goodbye. “I always prefer when I’m sitting with Reese, for Reese to tell it.”

While promoting his upcoming Prime Video series Lazarus, Coben told Us that Witherspoon called him with an idea, so the pair met to discuss what was on the actress’ mind.

“Reese came to my apartment, and I’m a little wary,” Coben admitted. “I collaborate on TV shows, but novels … that’s other people’s thing. I don’t do that.”

Once Witherspoon presented her “pretty damn good” idea, Coben changed his tune.

“I start taking out my yellow legal pad and we start writing down notes, talking back and forth. We’re spitballing right away,” he recalled. “At the end of the meeting, we said, ‘Well, why don’t we try writing this as a novel together?’”

Coben had nothing but amazing things to say about working with Witherspoon. As expected, she was “great to work with” and the end result of theircollaboration — which was released on Tuesday, October 14 — was one of the most highly anticipated books this year.

“She knew exactly how to handle me. When to give me room, when to crowd me, when to inspire me,” he added. “We became very close from it. It was a real honor and pleasure.”

Gone Before Goodbye tells the story of Army combat surgeon Maggie McCabe, who finds herself “trapped in a conspiracy she helped create but can’t understand,” according to the novel’s official description.

Maggie’s medical license gets revoked and her life is turned upside down before the doctor gets an opportunity to offer medical assistance to “one of the world’s most mysterious men.” However, the patient disappears under Maggie’s care.

Anyone familiar with Coben’s novels knows that this book includes some wild twists.

“I’m hoping she does for the medical profession what Elle Woods did for the law profession,” Witherspoon told USA Today in an interview about the novel, which arguably reads more like a movie than a book.

Coben told the newspaper that he’d love to see Witherspoon play the role onscreen. Witherspoon, meanwhile, didn’t confirm or deny her thoughts on the subject.

“One of the amazing things about creating a character like this is I can imagine so many women playing her,” she shared. “I should be so lucky.”

Aside from the book’s release, Cobben is gearing up for his upcoming Prime Video series, Lazarus, starring Sam Claflin and Bill Nighy. This time, the show was not adapted from one of his novels.

“In some ways, it’s easier because you’re not necessarily following the book. In other ways, you’re flying solo,” he said. “I knew the beginning and the end before we started. I knew a lot of the aspects.”

He and collaborator Danny Brocklehurst built the show up “from the ground floor,” but it turns out such an endeavour wasn’t a big change from adapting his books.

“Instead of them going to a book, they just came to me,” he explained. “I really did have a lot of this in my head before we started. I don’t know how much different it actually ends up being.”

Gone Before Goodbye is out now. Coben’s upcoming TV show, Lazarus, premieres all six episodes on Prime Video Wednesday, October 22.