Friday, December 31, 2021

PRESS UPDATE : VICE ONLINE .. FRIDAY DECEMBER 31ST 2021 ..

 




'I Do the Splits Very Easily': An Email Exchange With Joan Collins...


Ahead of her new BBC documentary "This Is Joan Collins", we asked the 80s legend about Hollywood, feminism and her best party trick.

By Lauren O'Neill...

It’s not everyday you are asked whether you would like to email with Dame Joan Collins, so when such a message arrives in your inbox, it kind of behooves anyone who is interested in fun or glamour or showbiz or any combination of these pleasures to say yes.

As an appreciator of all of the above, I was excited to learn that, though the request had not come due to Collins learning of me as a witty and charming interlocutor (sad), it was because she is currently promoting a new BBC film about her life and career, This Is Joan Collins, due to air on BBC Two on New Year’s Day. 

The documentary charts a seven-decade career in showbiz – featuring an encounter with Marilyn Monroe, a Playboy spread, and so many off-the-cuff Hollywood anecdotes it’s hard to keep track – via archive material and new interviews with Collins, who also narrates the documentary.

From her beginnings as a young Brit acting in movies to her career as a novelist, via, of course, her role as Alexis Carrington in Dynasty, a role as synonymous with the 80s as shoulder pads and Wham!, the film swerves through Collins’ life and loves, which are fascinating enough to beat out any hungover New Year’s Day reality TV marathon you could possibly be planning. After all, where would Lisa Vanderpump and Christine Quinn be without Joan before them?


VICE: Hi, Dame Joan. I’ll get right into it: Why did you feel like now was the right time to make a documentary about your life? How did it feel to excavate all of your different eras?
Dame Joan Collins:
 I’ve been approached about documentaries several times over the years. In the 90s, the Biography Channel made a documentary which was fairly definitive, but when Karen Steyn, the producer, came up with a novel format, I have to say I was quite intrigued. Her idea is that she’d present me with their version of my life through my home movies and backstage footage, and record me while I comment, clarify and recall what really happened behind the scenes.

As for the second part of your question, the word “excavate”, with all its connotations, is a bit too penetrative for my likes. Shall we say that it felt satisfying to be able to have my say about so many misconceptions?

From the film, it seems like you were very hands-on with how your story was told. As a writer yourself, what was the process of creating your narrative – the ultimate narrative of your life – like?
Again, it wasn’t me. I just opened up the archives, and what the director Clare Beavan chose to show me was as much as a surprise for me as I hope it will be for the viewer.  What Clare wanted me to do is to comment on how she had crafted my story. It was truly fascinating to see how she saw me.

Early in your career, you moved to Hollywood, and you tell so many stories throughout the documentary about all the Hollywood legends you met over the years. Do you have a specific encounter that feels most precious to you? Why is that?
Meeting Marlon Brando, Paul Newman and James Dean at a party during my first month in Hollywood.  They were all sitting together on a couch!

You’re best known for playing the villain Alexis in Dynasty. Was it a role you relished, or did it ever take its toll on you due to the public reaction?
I do not think of her as a villain.  She was abused by Blake and banished from seeing her children.  She was understandably vengeful and manipulative but not a killer, which Blake Carrington was!

I completely relished it and will be forever grateful to her. Think how lucky a person can be, especially an actress, to be rediscovered towards the end of what conventional wisdom said was the end of a career?  The public reaction, Alexis would say, was completely justified!

You’re beloved as a fashion icon and we see many of your looks over the years throughout the film, from the Met Gala in 2019 to the clothes you wore in Dynasty. What’s your relationship with fashion been over the course of your life?
I love fashion and have done so since I took my first tottering steps.  My mother and my aunts were always immaculately dressed, coiffed and maquillaged, if that’s a word. I would make dresses for my dolls in fashions taken from magazines and, when I went to Hollywood, I showed my designs for the character of every movie I was in, to the costumer. I worked side-by-side with Nolan Miller on Dynasty and with Pierpaolo Piccioli on that Met Gala dress. I have always figured out what my character looks like before I even attempt learning the lines – I’m one of those actors that works from the outside in.  And I must also be a frustrated fashion designer.

Joan with PierPaolo at The Met Gala


You’re somewhat of a love expert – what’s your number one piece of relationship advice?
Separate bathrooms.

The documentary suggests that you've always loved a party and a glamorous night out. Do you have a party trick? And perhaps more importantly, what's your number one hangover cure?
I do the splits very easily and suddenly, which takes everyone by surprise.  Although the last time I did them I hadn’t warmed up and spent a week in agony. My hangover cure is don’t get one in the first place!

As a follow up to that, you're obviously very comfortable as the life and soul of any event. Where does all your confidence come from? And how do you command the attention of a room? 
I remember sidling over to Woody Allen at a party and telling him that I identified with a piece he wrote about him being incredibly shy, because I was too. I was wearing a very low-cut dress and, looking me up and down, he remarked “You could have fooled me!” and scurried off.

You have a huge LGBTQ+ following. Do you have a special relationship with those fans? What do they mean to you?
I divide the world into two types of people, regardless of gender, race or sexual preference. There are fridges and there are stoves. I like to be surrounded by people who are stoves – witty, fun, generous and kind.  I don’t have time for fridges – self-pitying bores.

You mention in the film that you loved the 80s. What was so great about that decade and how is life different now?
The 80s was very reminiscent of the golden age of Hollywood. Fashions were glamorous, people felt optimistic, the world was stable and the culture reflected that sense of hope and fun.  What was there not to like?

You describe yourself as a feminist in the film. How have those values helped you throughout the years?
Maybe it was my upbringing, but I never felt in any way different to a man in what I could accomplish and achieve.  I was fortunate that I earned my way and took care of myself from my teens, so I became a natural feminist when I experienced any misogyny or inequality.  And I suppose that this early self-reliance made me grow up very quickly and gave me a sense of self-worth that many girls of my time (and perhaps women until very recently) did not have the opportunity to enjoy.


As an older woman who has never stopped embracing her sexuality, you’ve been very inspirational to many people, but you’ve also been judged for it as well. How have you handled that over the years? 
Handle the judgement? I don’t pay much attention to it, frankly.

You’ve been a famous woman in the showbiz industry for seven decades now. How have things changed?
I have to say that the world I grew up in seemed so much simpler, innocent, and perhaps more naïve, and as the decades wore on became increasingly complicated, discerning and perhaps cynical and judgemental. I do not envy the young stars of today who are under the constant glare of 24/7 news and social media attention.

And finally, I’m sure making this documentary has been an emotional process as you’ve reconsidered your life. What’s been your biggest takeaway from the experience?
Reconsider my life? What on earth do I have to reconsider? I feel I raised my children well and gave them security and self-reliance. I’m living a rich, wonderful and varied life and I have love and good friends.  I have no regrets and I am grateful for all of it – the ups and the downs.

This Is Joan Collins airs on BBC Two on New Year’s Day at 9PM.

RADIO UPDATE : THE AFTERNOON SHOW .. BBC RADIO 2 SCOTLAND .. FRIDAY DECEMBER 31ST 2021 ..

 

In advance of the first screening of the exciting new documentary film 'This Is Joan Collins' on BBC 2 tv on New Years Day at 9pm, Joan chatted to Nicola Meighan on Scotland's 'The Afternoon Show'.. Also on the show was a favourite of mine the most wonderful Barbara Dickson. You can listen to the show at the link below!

RADIO ALERT : STEVE WRIGHT IN THE AFTERNOON .. BBC RADIO 2 .. JANUARY 3RD 2022 .. 14:00 ..


 To talk about the exciting new documantary 'This Is Joan Collins' which airs January 1st, Joan joins OJ Borg on January 3rd on BBC Radio 2 at 2pm.. You can listen here!

STEVE WRIGHT IN THE AFTERNOON.. LISTEN HERE!

Thursday, December 30, 2021

TV ALERT : THIS IS JOAN COLLINS .. BBC 2 .. SATURDAY JANUARY 1ST 2022 .. 9PM ..


A wonderful way to start the new year is to tune into BBC 2 TV On New Years Day at 9pm for a first screening of the exciting new documentary film 'This Is Joan Collins'. The film will be screened again on January 7th at 11:05pm.. 

Click the following link to view after broadcast!!

THIS IS JOAN COLLINS ON BBC PLAYER!


A feature-length documentary on the life of one of the last surviving actresses from the golden age of Hollywood – Joan Collins. This epic film is told from the ringside as Joan narrates her rollercoaster life story with her inimitable wit and verve. A worldwide television phenomenon with her decade-defining role in Dynasty, Collins shares her extraordinary archive and never before seen home movie footage, giving an intimate glimpse into one of the world’s most iconic figures.

Against a backdrop of Collins’s own narration, her story showcases the extraordinary life of a woman who has lived through the glitz, the glamour and the enduring moments of Hollywood history, and survived it all with panache.


 

Wednesday, December 29, 2021

PRESS UPDATE : THE TELEGRAPH .. BEST DRESSED OF 21! .. DECEMBER 29TH 2021 ..

 



The 25 best-dressed women of 2021.....

Against the odds, 2021 has been an incredibly stylish year. We select the women whose outfits have shone through and inspired us..  

By Lisa Armstrong ( Head of Fashion ) .. Bethan Holt ( Fashion, News & Features Director ) ... Tamara Abraham ( Fashion Editor ) & Melissa Twigg 

Friday, December 24, 2021

PRESS UPDATE : MY WEEKLY SPECIAL .. DECEMBER 2021 ..


 Check out the current issue of 'My Weekly Special' for a two page feature on Joan to promote her current best seller 'My Unapologetic Diaries'.. 










TV UPDATE : BBC BREAKFAST .. BBC1 .. FRIDAY DECEMBER 24TH 2021 ..


To promote the upcoming BBC documentary 'This is Joan Collins' screening on New Years Day on BBC2 at 9pm, Joan made a glorious appearance on BBC Breakfast earlier.. You can catch up at the following link!

BBC BREAKFAST FEATURING JOAN.. CATCH UP HERE!

Thursday, December 23, 2021

PRESS UPDATE : WOMAN'S HOUR .. THURSDAY DECEMBER 23RD 2021 .. BBC RADIO 4 ..


 
Joan spoke to Chloe Tilley earlier on BBC Radio 4 about her upcoming documentary 'This Is Joan Collins' airing New Years Day on BBC 2 tv at 9pm.. 

You can listen to the conversation at the following link ...

WOMAN'S HOUR THURSDAY DECEMBER 23RD 2021 ..

Saturday, December 18, 2021

TV ALERT : THIS IS JOAN COLLINS .. BBC 2 .. JANUARY 1ST 2022 .. 9PM / JANUARY 7TH 2022 .. 11:05PM ..

One of 2022's tv highlights and the year isn't even a day old is 'This Is Joan Collins' the eagerly awaited documentary celebrating the career and life of guess who! This 90 min gem will air on New Years Day on BBC2 at 9pm with a repeat on Friday January 7th at 11:05pm.. Unmissable!!

A feature length documentary on the life of one of the last surviving actresses from the golden age of Hollywood - Joan Collins. This epic film is told from the ringside as Joan narrates her seven rollercoaster decades in showbiz with her inimitable wit and verve. A worldwide television phenomenon with her decade defining role in 'Dynasty', Collins shares her extraordinary home archive footage, giving an intimate glimpse into one of the world's most iconic figures.

Against a backdrop of Collin's own narration, her story showcases the extraordinary life of a woman who has lived through the glitz, the glamour and the enduring moments of Hollywood history and survived it all with panache...



PRESS UPDATE : THE IRISH TIMES MAGAZINE .. SATURDAY DECEMBER 18TH 2021 ..


 RÓISÍN INGLE TALKS TO THE HOLLYWOOD LEGEND ABOUT HER LATEST BOOK, MY UNAPOLOGETIC DIARIES – A ROLLICKING AND IRREVERENT READ FULL OF INDUSTRY SHENANIGANS, NIGHTS OUT AND CELEBRITY MUSINGS.

As sprightly and energetic as she may appear in photographs and on television chat shows, it appears that – like many of us civilians – Hollywood legend Dame Joan Collins is suffering from that very modern malaise: Zoom fatigue. A Zoom call has been requested but her publicist is adamant that “on this occasion, the rapport will be better by phone”. I can’t help feeling a little short-changed that we are not conversing via video call. It means I can’t see what inevitably glamorous outfit Collins is wearing or look over her shoulder to gawk at the furniture in her Beverly Hills apartment, or marvel at how astonishingly great she looks.

But perhaps it’s for the best. I’d been fretting, for good reason, for a few days about what to wear for a Zoom call with glamazon Collins. In her new book, My Unapologetic Diaries, nearly every time she encounters a celebrity or an acquaintance she makes a comment on their appearance and often specifically on their weight. The only person who gets off lightly on this score is Elton John. She noted that Elton had put on a few pounds but also that it suited him, keeping on the good side of the singer. Being neither waif-like nor groomed in a way Collins might approve of, I’d be extremely self conscious about her getting a look at me on Zoom. An old-school phone call, it is then.

A diarist since the age of 12, this latest book – her 18th, I am surprised to discover – is a rollicking and irreverent read full of industry shenanigans, nights out at restaurant hotspots such as The Ivy and Spago along with countless celebrity musings about the likes of Rod Stewart, the British royal family, Donald Trump and Elizabeth Taylor. She is snippy about a lot of people in the book, from model Cheryl Teigs, who gets a Collins dressing down for not wearing make-up on a night out with Jennifer Aniston, to Ellen DeGeneres who she reckoned was given far too much airtime when she decided to come out as a lesbian. (Ellen’s coming out threatened to overshadow Collins’s debut appearance in the short-lived Aaron Spelling TV show Pacific Palisades, which clearly had a great deal to do with her irritation). Jay Leno, for another example, is dismissed as “one of the unfunniest men in America as well as one of the most unattractive”.



But as the book title indicates, Collins makes no apologies for any of it, and my opening salvo when I get her on the phone is to ask what she has against apologising. “This new thing in which people have to apologise all the time is kind of pathetic,” she says. “I see it happening all the time on social media but I don’t feel that I have anything to apologise for. Because everything that I said was the truth. And, you know, why should women apologise for the truth?”

She’s keen to stress that the book was recorded not written down. She started recording it on a dictaphone in her dressing room on the set of Dynasty where for nearly 10 years she famously played the indomitable Alexis Carrington, winning a Golden Globe for the role. The diary spans nearly thirty years from 1989 to 2006 and was recorded whenever she felt like she had something to say. If the diaries have a narrative arc, one of them is her experience of being typecast as an evil, man-eating vixen – in reality Collins played Alexis as a more complex, nuanced and often very funny character, at least in the earlier seasons – and how hard she had to work against this to get more job offers after her huge success in Dynasty. She went from Dynasty to the West End in Noel Coward’s Private Lives, and thought she’d be inundated with work. She wasn’t.

How did she cope with being typecast? It was nothing new, she says. “I was typecast from the time I was put under contract aged 17. I was typecast as the smouldering British bad girl, I played baby prostitutes, I played juvenile delinquents. I have been typecast for most of my life.” Dealing with this and the inevitable ups and downs of a life in show business has required serious reserves of resilience. “I think what helped was the fact that my parents always stressed to me that life is not a bowl of cherries. Life is a bowl of cherry pits. People expect life to be easy and it’s not.”

Collins has always had a jaundiced eye when it came to the vagaries of life in the entertainment business. She refers me to a part in her diaries when she is at the height of her Dynasty fame, and a journalist asks her what she’s going to do if all of this ends. “I said it’s not a question of if, it’s a question of when. I’m flavour of the month now but I won’t always be. That’s the life of a jobbing actor and I’m very down to earth about these things”.

When I ask the Londoner about the leading men she’s reportedly met and romanced over the years, she balks at my use of the word assignations. “Assignations,” she says laughing. “I never really had assignations. I was married five times so a lot of my life was taken up with the same men. I was a serial monogamist.”




At one point she was in love with Warren Beatty and wrote in her first autobiography Past Imperfect about the illegal abortion she had while engaged to the actor. Who was she most taken by of the many handsome and charismatic leading men she worked with? “Paul Newman,” she says without hesitation. “I enjoyed working with him, he was a great friend, and a wonderful person and incredibly handsome”.

What is she proudest of when she looks back at her career? “Well, I am proud of having survived seven decades in a cut-throat industry. I don’t think many actresses have. I can think of Angela Lansbury and Sophia Loren, but I don’t know if they are still working. And Shirley Maclaine, but she came into the business two years after me. And Dynasty, I am proud of that and the success it brought me”. [Maclaine and Lansbury are still very much working but Collins is definitely a member of a very small club in terms of longevity].

Since starting her career as a teenager, Collins has appeared in more than 70 television programmes and films such as Our Girl Friday, The Virgin Queen, The Stud and The Bitch, the latter two based on bestselling bonkbusters written by her late sister, Jackie Collins. More recent roles on television have included The Royals, Benidorm and American Horror Story.

Her professional wings, and that of her peers, were clipped quite substantially during the pandemic. Has she found this a worrying time? “Yes, it was worrying up to a point, because we did everything we could to protect ourselves. We had the vaccines as soon as we could. But the fact of the matter is, that however much you protect yourself, this virus is very sinister. And in the south of France this summer, exactly six months after my second vaccine, I got Covid. And I got it after being very, very careful, not touching anybody, not being close to anybody, not doing the hugs … my doctor told me that the reason I got it is that the vaccine wore off after six months. Yeah, it’s worrying. People say it’s just a flu, it’s just a cold. It’s not.”

She wasn’t bored during Covid, at least. “My mother used to say, people who are boring get bored,” she laughs.

Inevitably, we talk about ageing. I should clarify that I’m actually the one who brings it up but only because my mother (82) told me to. “Will you please ask Joan Collins: does she have any ailments?” my mother had said, listing her own ailments – the macular degeneration, the arthritis and the broken bones.

I do my daughterly duty. My mother says to ask have you any ailments, Joan?

“I don’t really have any,” she says, pondering the notion. “Somebody hit me on my Achilles heel once years ago, when I was at the airport, crawling after one of my grandchildren. And so I have a slight bit of a pain in my Achilles heel. But other than that – and I touch wood when I say this – I haven’t.”



It’s astonishing, really. She’s something of a medical miracle in this regard, even her own GP can’t figure it out. “When I went to my doctor recently, he said, ‘How many pills do you take?’ I said, I just take one for indigestion. And he was amazed.”

I imagine she must be sick of being asked why she thinks she has aged so well but I ask anyway. She doesn’t mind trying to pin it down, and immediately gives credit to her mother. “I think it’s all because my mother was very, very, very careful how much she gave us when we were young. She always insisted we ate all the greens and we didn’t have sweets. We had supplements up the kazoo. And she also was very much in favour of physical exercise. And she was quite strict about health before other people were into it. And of course, I was also lucky, in that I grew up when everything wasn’t, you know, filled with fertilizers, and all kinds of stuff that they put in vegetables and things today.”
In the book she quotes her mother saying women had to suffer for beauty.

 “It was said in a jokey way, when she was doing my hair as a child and it hurt.” But Collins says – apart from vigorous workouts – she doesn’t really believe in suffering to look good.

“I haven’t done all of that stuff which so many of my friends have done, which they call tweakments where they have needles stuck in their faces and poisoned substances put in, I’ve never done that and I never would,” she says. “Working out is a bit of suffering but it’s not real suffering … I mostly try not to take anything too seriously in life”.

In a previous memoir, The World According to Joan, she revealed how at age 17 she was drugged and sexually assaulted by her first husband, the late actor Maxwell Reed. It was at the very beginning of her career six decades before the Me Too movement would give voice to women’s experiences. Collins says her father, a theatrical agent, always warned her about men in the industry. “He knew what the men were like. And he said if they get fresh give them a knee in the lower regions. I think it’s about time [the Me Too movement] happened. Women have been used for too long. Just look at what Marilyn Monroe said about her early life. She said she was passed around, like a piece of meat.”

I tell Collins that a friend of mine, a Collins super-fan met her in Palm Springs a couple of years ago. They had what he said was a wonderful conversation during which he praised her for being so ahead of her time in terms of equitable pay, insisting she was paid the same as her late costar John Forsythe who played Blake Carrington. (Forsythe, Collins says, was “a total misogynist”.)

She won that equal-pay argument even if the number of episodes she was in was cut back, with producers saying they could no longer afford her. “Since Linda Evans and I were the most popular on Dynasty it stood to reason we should have got the same amount of money as John Forsythe. I didn’t think there should be any argument about that and I never did. I was an early feminist, I believe women could do anything men can do except when it comes to physical strength ... women are just as smart and you know I was raising three children, and working as well as the breadwinner that’s hard to do. Not many men are bringing up three children and are also the breadwinner.”

I  ask whether any of her partners – she was married to actor Anthony Newley with whom she had two children – resented her success over the years. Did her earning and star power annoy any of them?

“Yes,” she says.

And how did that manifest?

“In divorce, obviously.”

This is classic Collins, queen of the one-liners. When she first got together with Percy Gibson, her producer husband who is more than 30 years younger, she was asked whether she was worried about the age difference. “If he dies, he dies,” quipped Collins.

Now that we’re talking about Percy, would she rate him as the best of her five husbands? She clearly agrees, but says she doesn’t want to “gush” about him. “That’s too cringe-making but yes, he’s wonderful in every way”. The diary tells the story of her falling in love with him after meeting him through her theatre work. It’s a slow-burn love story told with wonder and appreciation.

Not surprisingly, Collins has learnt a lot about marriage over the years. “You have to be very tolerant, you have to love each other but also be great friends and to not find fault all the time ... the tolerance is one of the most important things. And being a team.”

She is taking a small hiatus in LA at the moment, before returning to London in January for her twentieth wedding anniversary celebrations. Can she share any details? “Ah, it’s a secret,” she says.

There are a number of work projects coming up too, but she doesn’t want to jinx them by speaking too soon. She can talk about the six-hour miniseries that’s being made about her and her sister, the late author of beloved bestselling books. “It’s called Joan and Jackie,” she says. I mention it’s six years since Jackie died of breast cancer after keeping her illness a secret from her sister. She must miss her?

“Oh, God, I do, I do, so much. You know, she was part of the reason that we came back and bought this apartment in Los Angeles so that we would be close to her. And then it was a terrible shock, a terrible, terrible shock when she died.”

Collins is godmother to several people, including supermodel and actress Cara Delevingne. What kind of advice does she give the younger women in her life?

“Listen to your instincts,” she says. “You know, the first thing that happens to you, when you are given a choice of something whether it’s going out with somebody or getting a job, the first thing that comes into your brain, it is usually your instinct.” Did this kind of instinctive living serve her well? “As I’ve gotten older, I’ve gone more and more with my instinct. Yes, definitely.”



We talk about ageing again. And ageism. She believes people should not be judged on their biological age. “I mean, I’ve seen people in their 50s and 60s who are bent over and can hardly walk. I’m going to a birthday party tomorrow of a friend of ours who is 95. She is quite sprightly and in a relationship. You can’t be judged on your age.”

I would have thought fabulous Joan Collins might be exempt from ageism?

“Maybe I have been to some extent. But I’ve heard people say about me, ‘well, she looks good for her age,’ and that kind of thing. I think that’s condescending.”

“Anyway, how old are you?” she asks suddenly. I tell her I have just turned 50. “Well enjoy it and remember you will never look as good or be as fit as you are right now”. Thank goodness we are not on Zoom, I think.

Before our half-hour, old-fashioned phone call is over, I bring up the fact that in several parts of her diaries she mentions starving herself for various castings or even meetings about roles.

“I don’t do that anymore,” she says, adding that she enjoyed a big plate of ribs while out with Gibson the night before. When they are not out her husband cooks and they watch programmes such as The Morning Show and Impeachment about the Bill Clinton scandal. They also go to the cinema a lot. The couple went to the movies twice the other day, once to see to The House of Gucci and a second time to a friend’s home where they watched “the most appalling movie I’ve ever seen, it had a $250 million budget”. I try to find out which one – No Time to Die had a $250 million budget, for one example – but she refuses to tell me the name of the movie she saw. “I’d be blacklisted in this town,” she laughs. Whatever else might be in Joan Collins’ future, somehow, I can’t see that ever happening.

My Unapologetic Diaries by Joan Collins is published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson



TV ALERT : PAUL O'GRADY'S CHRISTMAS SATURDAY NIGHT LINE UP.. ITV1 09:30PM... SATURDAY DECEMBER 18TH 2021 ..


 Just a reminder that Joan will make an appearance on a special Christmas edition of Paul O'Grady's Saturday Night Line Up on Saturday evening ( 18th) at 09:30pm on ITV1.. Also on the show are Paddy McGuiness, Sunetra Sarker & Julian Clary...



Friday, December 17, 2021

TV ALERT : THE GRAHAM NORTON SHOW .. BBC 1 .. FRIDAY DECEMBER 17TH 2021 .. 10:35PM / 11:05PM IRELAND ...


 
As an extra Christmas treat, Joan can be seen twice this weekend on UK tv, with firstly tonight on BBC1 as she is Graham Norton's special guest along with Stanley Tucci and Jamie Oliver among others! You can catch The Graham Norton Show on Friday at 10.35pm ( 11:05 in Ireland ) .. Joan can also be seen on Saturday evening the 18th alongside Julian Clary on Paul O'Grady's Saturday Night Christmas Line Up on ITV1 at 09:30pm.. 



PRESS UPDATE : THE SPECTATOR CHRISTMAS ISSUE .. DECEMBER 2021 ..


 

Joan Collins and Taki

Hollywood, fist-fights and getting cancelled: Joan Collins and Taki in conversation..






Introductions

Scene: a drawing room in London.

When the recording starts, Taki is already mid-anecdote…

Taki: … I was sent out to Monte Carlo to speak to Roger Moore. The Spectator offered to pay all my expenses. I said thank you, I’ll pay my own. I went and had a terrific drunken dinner with Roger who really spilled the beans, cos we were buddies. I came back. The tape was empty because I’d never turned the recorder on.

Joan: I’d known Roger since I was 15, because my father was a big agent in London and I came back from school — oh, 14 actually, because I left school at 15 — and there’s the most gorgeous man I’ve ever seen standing there. He came over and said: ‘How do you do? You must be Joan, my name is Roger Moore.’ And I said: ‘Hello, how are you? What’s that screeching in the background from Daddy’s office?’ And he said: ‘Oh that’s my wife. Your father’s trying to get her to go on tour and she doesn’t want to do it.’ Her name was Dorothy Squires, who you might’ve known.

Taki: Of course!

Joan: Famous for being rather loudmouthed, let us say.

Taki: The third wife, Luisa — she and I became friends. She spoke no language but Italian. One day after I came out of Pentonville University, Bill Buckley had rented the Château de Rougemont — an 18th-/17th-century château — to give a party for me, so I arrived there and Roger and Luisa were coming out of the car. Luisa in a loud voice said: ‘Roger, Roger, è questo, chi uscito di prigione [that’s the man who just came out of prison].’ Roger turned around to shush her and he hit his head on this enormous gate and knocked himself out. And there I was, so Pat Buckley came down and said: ‘My God, Taki, we can’t take you anywhere! You come out of jail and you knock out Roger Moore…!’ Of course Roger and I were great friends. He used to tell me all these jokes, oh you know Roger.

Joan: Oh, I know! Some of them were a bit stale after a while… But people used to make outrageous jokes! I mean, I grew up going to variety theatres all the time. Then I went to America and there was Milton Berle and Don Rickles, all politically incorrect…

Taki: They were all Jewish and they were all the best, of course. The best was Jackie Mason. He said: ‘You know how you can tell the Christians in this town? How? They wait in line.’ But Joan, you can’t tell jokes any more.

Joan: No, you can’t. And that’s wokeness (and such a weird word, wokery, wokeness). The problem is that you can’t have an opinion about anything. I don’t wish to get cancelled.

Taki: Except, Joan, you should cancel them!

Joan: Saturday Night Live used to be hysterically funny and very politically incorrect. Now it’s sacrificed humour for wokeness.

Taki: Completely.

Joan: I haven’t been to America for about six months now, but I’ve certainly seen this country become more humourless.

Taki: I think in academic circles it’s just as bad here as it is over in America. In society I think it’s worse over there. I went to an opening last night. A friend had an exhibition and I was being a drunk and I was saying terrible things and nobody told me to shut up. In New York I’m much more careful. Here I was surrounded by friends, and you know the English have a sense of humour. In America all you hear is: ‘What do you mean by that?’ Especially from women: ‘What do you mean by that?’ What do you think I mean?

Joan: What I find really sad is the people — I don’t know who these people are — who are going into libraries and schools and universities and colleges and saying you can’t say that in this book, children’s books even, and cancelling things. They haven’t got to Shakespeare and Shaw yet but they will. People say to me: ‘Why do you want to call yourself an actress? It’s not politically correct.’ I say: ‘Are you kidding? It’s not politically correct? Why? I will call myself an actress to my dying day.’

Taki: Sorry to interrupt you, Joan, but you’re so right. The idea to hear a beautiful woman say ‘Yeah, I’m an actor’ — ha! Really, are you in drag? An actress is an actress!

Joan: Help yourself to more wine.

Taki: We’re starting early!

First meeting

Taki: I was thinking, you know, that we went out on two dates. The last date was 31 years ago. We went to Annabel’s, the two of us, and then I tried to kiss you, and you said: ‘I’m in a relationship.’ So when I read in your book your thing about Robin Hurlstone I said: ‘Who’s that asshole?’ But the date before was 64 years ago…

Joan: Didn’t you also have a fight with Nicky Hilton in the lobby in the Plaza?

Taki: Over you! Over you! It was 1957! Do you believe this crap? We’re still around!

Joan: A real fist-fight! Two young men brawling over me!

Taki: He was tough.

Joan: I was very flattered. And you had just bought me something. A little anchor covered in diamonds, very lovely it was. I think your father liked me.

Taki: Who do you think put up the money for that?!

Joan: I think Nicky was a bit of a…

Taki: … shithead.

Joan: A bit of a broken record, yes.

Taki: Yes. He used to beat up Elizabeth Taylor.

Joan: My aunt Pauline was on the beach opposite the Carlton when they were on honeymoon in 1950 and she saw him slap her around. I knew Elizabeth quite well, she was very funny. When I got divorced from Peter Holm, my fourth husband, she sent me over a note which said: ‘I’m still ahead by three!’

So who’s been naughty and nice?
‘So who’s been naughty and nice?’

Taki: That’s very funny.

Joan: I did her last film, you know, and she was not well. She could hardly walk, and she was playing an agent. It was with Shirley MacLaine and Debbie Reynolds. We were three actresses, dancers and she was our agent, she was playing Sue Mengers, did you ever meet Sue Mengers?

Taki: She wrote me a letter when I was in prison.

Joan: You knew Sue?!

Taki: I didn’t know her. She wrote me a letter when I went to Pentonville, wishing me well and saying when you come out, come and see me. I never did, but that was very kind of her. I’m sure somebody told her there was a nice guy who was in Pentonville, having advanced studies, so she wrote to me.

Joan: She was like that. She didn’t care what she said. I knew her when she was a secretary at William Morris and she became very friendly with Tony Newley —

Taki: Your husband.

Joan: Yes. We used to invite her to Montauk. I was pregnant, I was pregnant the whole time, and she used to come, we had a lot of gay friends and she would sunbathe in the nude, and…

Taki: And a lot of people became gay.

Joan: She didn’t care. She was very pretty.

Taki: Well, anyway, when I read your memoirs, you said that after you broke up with that asshole Robin Hurlstone the Bamfords and Hugo Guinness stopped speaking to you. And I said: ‘Jesus, Hugo will believe anything, Hugo will do anything!’

Joan: Yes, well, unfortunately he did.

Taki: Who is Robin Hurlstone?

Joan: He’s an art dealer. He works from a small flat somewhere, I don’t know. He was really anti-everything. The thing that really started us on a downward spiral was when I got an OBE in 1997, and I said: ‘This is so exciting, I’m so thrilled! I’m going to Buckingham Palace. You’ll come of course.’ But he said, ‘I’m not coming to Buckingham Palace just to get a silly little OBE. If you get a damehood I’ll go…’

Taki: I mean, what an asshole!

Joan: How did you and I first meet? Across a crowded room?

Taki: Yes, across a crowded room in El Morocco. The funny thing is that the present editor, Fraser Nelson, I had lunch with him recently and he asked me: ‘How did you meet Joan Collins?’ Fraser is obviously unsophisticated at picking up women. We were in a nightclub, and we exchanged glances across a crowded room. You came in, the first two, three tables were full of really big shots. And then for the, let’s say, the people who were not known, weren’t perfectly dressed, there was a faraway room which was called Siberia. But that’s how life was then. And anyway, I saw you. I thought you were very pretty. We met, and I think we had a fight with a man who was wearing a toupee. And the toupee came off.

Joan: Really?

Taki: Yeah, George DeWitt. He was a comedian, and he had the hots for you. You didn’t know him. He introduced me to you, and then I started talking to you, and he said: ‘Get out.’ I was 20 then, pulled his toupee off, it was terrible…

Joan: But I wasn’t with this guy?

Taki: No, you weren’t with him.

Joan: I think I was with my agent or something. But then you pursued me to Los Angeles.

Taki: I came out to Los Angeles, and then you dropped me like a hot potato because you went to star in The Bravados.

Joan: Oh, I didn’t drop you like a hot potato!

Taki: Like a hot potato! And I flew back.

Joan: And your fight with Nicky — you didn’t challenge him to a duel? Men were men and women were women then.

Taki: Yeah, but then people had terrific manners. You knew if you had bad manners, you’d be shot. But I see the Hiltons continued their elegant lifestyle…

Joan: I don’t know them very well.

Taki: You’re not missing much.

Joan: Paris used to compare her sister to Jackie and me.

Taki: Sorry, there’s a difference. The Collins sisters had talent. The Hilton sisters have a PR guy.

Joan: I think nowadays people are frightened, I think actresses, particularly, are frightened to look like stars, or act like stars, or be glamorous or be well dressed or be elegant, because they will be considered not to be good actresses. Vivien Leigh said this to me. She was making a movie with Warren Beatty, who I was going with at the time, engaged with actually. And she said: ‘My dear, I was not taken seriously as an actress until I started to lose my looks.’ Vivien Leigh was very, very beautiful, and by this time she was in her early fifties. She was still beautiful.

Taki: She was a wonderful actress. I didn’t realise she died when she was 53.

Joan: She died at 53?

Taki: Yeah, that’s 30 years younger than I am! Can you imagine?

The Trumps

Taki: I had dinner with Conrad Black the other night. I’m a big fan of Conrad’s. Except for Paul Johnson, I’ve never met a man who has more knowledge about politics. And I said to Conrad: ‘You gotta tell your friend Donald Trump he’s gonna split the party.’ He said: ‘He’s gonna win it all.’

Joan: I write about Trump in my book. I call him a schmuck. When I first met him he was enchanting, because I was plugging a new perfume that I was promoting and he gave a party for me at Trump Tower. This was in the late 1980s, absolutely adorable. Shortly after that he called up one of the producers of Dynasty and said ‘I wanna be in Dynasty’ and they said ‘I’m sorry but we’re cast’. He said: ‘But I am Dynasty.’

Taki: That’s very funny.

Joan: Then he asked could he possibly be one of Alexis’s lovers, and I said something rude about that. And then he riposted:

‘And I wouldn’t want to be one of Joan Collins’s lovers either, on or off the screen.’ But Ivana was a really good friend, you must know Ivana.

Taki: Ivana went out with my friend Roffredo Gaetani.

Joan: Oh my god, yes, she did!

Taki: Roffredo started going out with Ivana. (Now this is a true story and I’m going to use only one bad word.) We were at a party together: Gianni Agnelli — the most charismatic European, sitting like ‘I’m bored’, smoking, cos in those days you could smoke — myself, Alexandra, Roffredo, and Ivana. And Ivana is telling Gianni about boats and what size the perfect boat should be. I could see his lids drooping, so I said — I had to stop this — I said: ‘Ivana, I’m terribly sorry but Gianni had boats before you gave your first blowjob.’ And the whole table laughed and everybody got up and left. That was the only way to end it.

Joan: I would love to have met Agnelli. He liked taking off his clothes didn’t he? Because there’s a famous picture, I think it was by Slim Aarons, he kept jumping naked off a boat…



Taki: Off a boat. He never wore a bathing suit, always a towel. But you know they don’t have those kind of people any more.

Old Hollywood vs New

Taki: I’m not joking. Hollywood, when I was there, it was such a fabulous place. I was there three days before I was dismissed by you. And then I went back. And I remember Gregory Peck came with his wife, and I had become friends with Cecilia and the sons of course, Stephen. Anyway, they had Kirk Douglas who was in a very bad mood, he was dieting, and they had a girlfriend for me called Elizabeth Ashley —

Joan: Oh, that was your girlfriend?

Taki: Well, she wasn’t my ‘girlfriend’. But it was still glamorous. And this was ’71…

Joan: Yes, it was very glamorous. And they were part of that last gasp of the golden age. Greg, who I was lucky enough to work with in The Bravados

Taki: You dropped him like a hot potato for the fourth time!

Joan: I was under contract!

Taki: And you had a sore bottom. I read in the paper that you said: ‘My bottom hurts because I’m riding all day, doing the rehearsals.’ I’ve seen the movie many times, heh heh heh.

Joan: I was terrified of horses. Gene Kelly told me: ‘Don’t ride horses, kid, they have stunt girls to do that, and you’ll put a stunt girl out of work.’ I said: ‘They scare me to death.’ And he said just do the close-ups and have the guys do the legs. So when we were doing The Bravados, they had the handler in my close-ups hold the legs.

Taki: That’s very funny.

Joan: I think the last gasp of Hollywood glamour was when Marlon died. Did you know him?

Taki: I didn’t.

Joan: He wasn’t glamorous, but it was his aura.

Taki: His aura, bravo. Well said.

Joan: He was such a fantastic actor. And every-body adored him. I was very friendly with Paul Newman and Jimmy ‘James’ Dean, and they just wanted to be like Marlon. Everybody you worked with did.

Taki: I never met him.

Joan: Who do you think is a great leading man today?

Taki: Liberace! I can’t think of one.

Joan: But where are the Clark Gables and the Cary Grants? Well, we do have Hugh Grant, who I think is…

Taki: He’s very good. But Clark Gable! There was a roguishness about him. In other words: ‘If you don’t take your clothes off I’ll take them off for you!’ That type of manliness. Now, that’s toxic masculinity.

Joan: Toxic masculinity! Compare James Bond now with Roger and Sean… I like a man to be manly!

Taki: Because you’re old-fashioned and you’re pretty.

Joan: Brad Pitt is a very good actor and very good-looking. Have you seen Once Upon a Time in Hollywood?

Taki: Yes! I noticed something in that film, which nobody knows except for me. And it was completely right. I don’t know Tarantino, but I knew Bruce Lee because Roman Polanski and I are buddies. Forty-two years ago he brought in some Chinese-looking guy for a fight, and I recognised him: Bruce Lee! I knew him through martial arts. And I bowed and we became friends, and Bruce Lee used to do a funny thing. He said: ‘Go ahead, kick as hard as you want.’ As you do a jump kick, he would do a shield and just move it this much, and it would neutralise your kick. When you held it, when he attacked you, you had to move it forward so of course it blew you back. So this was a trick that martial artists do. All you have to do is move this much and even a punch to the nose will not knock you out. He did that in the film and nobody caught it. How the hell did Tarantino know that that’s what Bruce Lee used to do?

Joan: Did you go to Roman and Sharon’s wedding?

Taki: No. I didn’t make the cut. But I became very friendly with him.

Joan: His wedding was insanity. It was at the Playboy Club, they had all these girls around with bunny tails. Sharon had her hair in fabulous wild curls, with flowers in it and bows, and he looked a little bit like Michael Myers in Austin Powers. I loved Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. I saw it three times! I find most films so… I’m a member of the Academy, and I can’t find one thing I want to vote for. I mean, they are incredibly dull, all these films, and very woke. It is strange. I want to go to the cinema to be entertained.

Taki: Oh Joan! Watching all those wonderful old films… People in white tie, in vast nightclubs, where everybody bowed. I want to see glamour. I don’t want to see somebody in Harlem who’s a drug addict talking to a fat woman who’s also a drug addict about their child who’s about to become a drug addict! I mean, I’m sorry, I don’t want to see that.

Joan: Also, don’t you find today that humour is scatological? It’s all about bodily functions or sex. There’s no wit!

Taki: I’ve been writing this for years. The idea, Robert Benchley and all those people… Robert Benchley coming out of the hotel drunk and he sees this van. He says ‘Hello’, doorman says ‘Come here taxi’, he says ‘Excuse me, I’m a United States admiral’, he says ‘Oh, in that case call me a battleship!’.

Joan: That’s so witty! I’ve been doing a couple of TV shows with comedians here. I just don’t find them funny. I am on Instagram but I don’t usually read remarks that are made about me. But I did once, because I was sitting in the Jonathan Ross show for two-and-a-half hours, and it’s very difficult to be smiling all the time. And I saw one comment that said: ‘Joan Collins looked very bored!’

Taki: They said that?

Joan: Two-and-a-half hours!

Goodbyes

Taki: You look so… I wish I could look like you.

Joan: Don’t be silly.

Taki: You look wonderful. But really, you found happiness.

Joan: I have, so much. Twenty years, darling!

Taki: I think that’s what keeps people going, looking well. Because when you see a miserable fart, they look awful, they smell awful, it’s because they are unhappy. And you can tell a person’s happy. You’re happy. This sounds like I’m a Hollywood character, but I could tell, the moment we came in.

Joan: Thank you.

Taki: I think it’s great. You’ve had a great career, you’ve been honoured by the Queen for your career, and I have nothing to be thankful about.

Joan: But you’re brilliant, darling.

Taki: I’m joking. If it weren’t for my father, I wouldn’t be so brilliant, but anyway.

Joan: You are! I mean your knowledge of history and culture is extraordinary.

Taki: What happened last night. A man came up to me, he said: ‘You don’t remember me, my name is David Ogilvy’. And I said: ‘I remember you very well David’ — 44 years ago, in Gstaad, he said to me ‘Why don’t you write something serious?’ So I told him: ‘Here I am, 44 years later, still writing the same old crap.’ He was embarrassed, and I said: ‘Don’t be embarrassed, I couldn’t care less.’ But anyway.

Joan: Which was the big birthday of yours that I went to? It was in the hotel.

Taki: I gave a party to celebrate the collapse of communism. You were in Private Lives. Jay McInerney, who wrote Bright Lights, Big City, his publisher and I went outside to smoke. I took a sniff of coke, and suddenly you arrive four hours after the party started because it’s after the performance. And you said, ‘You didn’t have to wait for me here!’ And I remember the publisher, he was wonderful, he knows what a star is like, he says ‘Good for her’, and we walked in with you, at the Savoy, the back entrance.

Joan: I was joking! I thought it was your birthday.

Taki: No, it was to celebrate the collapse of communism.

Joan: I remember going to Mrs Astor’s 95th birthday in New York and I remember asking her: ‘You’re just so full of life, what’s your secret?’ She said: ‘Just keep getting rid of your boring old friends! Make new, younger ones!’

Taki: She’s right.

Joan Collins’s My Unapologetic Diaries is out now.