'I loved being part of Bond movie history'

PRIYANGA BURFORD DISCUSSES DIVERSITY AND DIRECTING

NOT too many British Asian actresses have starred in James Bond movies, so there is a special thrill in talking to Priyanga Burford about her role playing “Dr Symes” in No Time To Die.

“Dr Symes is a scientist working in a government laboratory facility,” she says. So what’s it like being in a Bond film? Burford says attending the world premiere at the Royal Albert Hall in London on September 29 with her husband was the first time she had seen the film.

“It was really good fun, I had a great time,” she tells Eastern Eye. She was named Best Actress in Eastern Eye’s 2019 Arts Culture & Theatre Awards (ACTAs), in the film, TV and drama category for her role as Amina Chaudury in the TV drama Press.

Burford explains her first name is the Sri Lankan version of “Priyanka”, the spelling used in India. She was born in the island nation into a Sinhalese family with roots in Kandy and Colombo, and was brought to Britain “as a baby” by her parents in the early 1970s.

She read English at Keble College, Oxford, before training for three years at LAMDA (London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art, where actor Benedict Cumberbatch is currently the chancellor).

Drama, she says, “has always been a huge passion for me”. She did it at school “and loads of plays while I was at Oxford”.

She had to audition for her part in No Time To Die. “I had to audition at Pinewood, reading with a scene partner for (the director) Cary (Joji) Fukunaga and (co-producer) Barbara Broccoli. We were sitting at a table with them and doing a lot of improvisation. There was a script, but they wanted us to not really use the script, but improvise.”

After she got the part, “we filmed at Pinewood. It seems like a very long time ago because of all the delays in the release. We filmed it back in 2019. It was a great thing to be part of because it’s part of British cinema history. It’s this enormous franchise. They managed to create a feeling of closeness, even though we were on this huge, big kind of machine of a production.”

She adds: “They managed to make it feel like a smaller production. You’re working closely with Cary. And Barbara Broccoli was there as well. She didn’t feel like a distant figure. The work was exciting and you got the impression, definitely, that you were working with people who were absolutely at the top of their game in every department. That was fantastic to experience.”

She admits: “I couldn’t wait to see it on a big screen. And personally I think they did the right thing releasing it cinematically because it’s a film that needs to be seen in that format, because the way it’s shot and directed is epic. It’s on this huge grand scale. Seeing it on a big screen is the best way to experience it.”

After the premiere, she saw the film again as a family with her teenage sons.

“I got about five minutes of kudos, then everything was back to normal,” she laughs. “I loved the whole experience, it was just wonderful you’re a part of something like that. And it’s Daniel Craig’s last one.

“I felt very privileged and happy to have been able to put some work into making that whole thing, the whole story.”

She pays tribute to the writers who “have done an amazing job with bringing the story, this franchise and the character into the 21st century.

“The female characters are really well drawn. They aren’t simply props for the male protagonist’s story. There’s a huge amount going on for the females. They are witty and interesting, which also adds to the pleasure of seeing it because you get the idea that you’re watching real people.”

Did she meet Craig, who is making his fifth and final outing as Bond?

“I met him very briefly. I can’t say I know him at all, but he was lovely.”

Would she like to play Bond herself? There have been suggestions the next James Bond should be a black actress, so why not a British Asian one?

“There have been suggestions left, right and centre,” she agrees. “It seems like everything’s up for grabs.

“In the absolutely sure knowledge that I won’t be asked, I can say I would love to play it.”

She is happy there is a lot more diversity in the world of acting and now it has even come into Bond movies.

“It was a good thing,” she says. “And long may it continue all round. It’s a relief to see the TV and film world looking

‘The female roles were well drawn’

more and more like the real world we all live in. There’s room for all the stories.”

In fact, she spent lockdown writing Monster Heart, an 18-minute film based on the final birthday of the author Mary Shelley (August 30, 1797-February 1, 1851), who produced the Gothic novel, Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus, when she was only 19. It was a book Burford had read at Oxford. She also directed Monster Heart.

Mary, daughter of the political philosopher William Godwin and the philosopher and feminist activist Mary Wollstonecraft, was married to the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley. Some critics suggested that such a stunning novel couldn’t possibly have been written by a young woman, and that her husband must have been the real author. He wasn’t.

Burford says about Monster Heart: “It’s more about Mary, looking back over an eventful, sometimes tragic, difficult life, and trying to make sense of some of the decisions and the losses that she’s suffered. It’s about someone taking stock and realising that there are some things you do when you’re young that you have to reckon with when you’re old.”

“I wrote it during the lockdown at a time when we were all isolated and there was so much loss of different kinds in everyone’s life.

“That story, being historical, gave me a nice telescope with detachment to explore this idea about loss and how you recover from it.

“I’m towards the end of the picture edit now. It was a brilliant, intense experience and a massive learning curve. We are hopefully going to be finished sometime towards the beginning of the new year. I definitely want to do more directing.”

Burford has also been in Amrita Acharia’s short film, The Carer, which is about to hit the festival circuit. She plays “Lisa”, a daughter who faces mental and physical breakdown because of the pressures of looking after an ailing mother.

She describes The Carer as “an insightful short film which highlights the lives of millions of people in this country and elsewhere in the world who have to care for an elderly relative.

“I think over 80 per cent of unpaid carers in this country are women, because the burden falls disproportionately on the shoulders of women.

“I really loved playing that character and highlighting her story which is totally unexplored, because women in their 50s seem to disappear completely from our culture.”