What happens when a Hollywood actor and SF author join forces on a novel? The pair talk about their literary bromance – and their quest to turn Reeves’s comic book series into something deeper

Keanu Reeves has a reputation to maintain as one of the nicest, humblest guys on the Hollywood A-list, and maintain it he does. Grizzled of beard, spiky of hair, in a V-neck T-shirt under a dark suit teamed, oddly, with chunky brown hiking boots, it’s Reeves – rather than the anticipated team of flunkies – who sets about moving side tables and pouring everyone glasses of water as we begin our interview in a suite in a Fitzrovia hotel.

He’s here with the writer China Miéville to talk about their collaboration on Reeves’s first novel, The Book of Elsewhere, and he does the nice/humble guy thing again almost immediately the interview proper begins. Very early on, he says categorically, “I didn’t want to write the book. I wanted another creator to take that journey. So, ultimately, China has written the novel. It’s not, like, we could look at page eight and say, ‘Oh, I wrote this section.’ I didn’t write any of the novel.’”