Mr Norton, we’ve been expecting you ... will TV hunk be the next 007?
LOOKING suave in a dinner jacket, hunkily emerging from the water in swimming trunks, flirting with glamorous women, fighting villains...
Remind you of anyone? It’s no wonder that James Norton is being tipped as the next James Bond.
And the Grantchester star admits that his latest TV role will only reignite the long-running rumours.
Norton, 32, warned the team behind McMafia that putting him in a tuxedo for his first scene would draw obvious comparisons with 007. The British actor admitted the role was almost an audition to succeed Daniel Craig as Bond.
He said he discussed the similarities, and rumours linking him to the Bond role, with series creators Hossein Amini and James Watkins.
‘I did warn James and Hoss that if they wrote the first scene of me getting out of a black cab in a tux that would maybe stir some of it,’ he said. ‘To be honest...I am personally very grateful that Daniel Craig is going to do at least one more, maybe two, or five.’ In McMafia, Norton plays a banker of Russian descent who is trying to escape his mafia family’s crime legacy.
The actor, who is diabetic, underwent gruelling Russian martial arts training for the big-budget New Year drama, which was filmed in London, Croatia, Qatar, Mumbai, Prague, Cairo and Belgrade.
The BBC hopes McMafia will be as big a hit as its 2016 thriller series The Night Manager.
Norton shot to fame in 2014 playing psychopath Tommy Lee Royce in BBC1 drama Happy Valley. He played Prince Andrei in the BBC’s adaptation of War And Peace and vicar Sidney Chambers in ITV’s Grantchester – in which a swimming scene set pulses racing.
McMafia was inspired by Misha Glenny’s 2008 book McMafia: Seriously Organised Crime. The eight-part series starts at 9pm on New Year’s Day on BBC1.