CRAIG’S BOND WILL BE A HARD ACT TO FOLLOW
HOLLYWOOD’S FINEST ARE BEING SHAKEN AND STIRRED BY FEVERISH SPECULATION ABOUT WHO WILL REPLACE DANIEL CRAIG AS THE ICONIC SUPERSPY,
He’s the very embodiment of James Bond, so it’s hard to credit the fuss that was made when Daniel Craig took on the iconic role 15 years ago in Casino Royale.
When the British actor was first cast, headlines in the UK were scathing – calling him “James Bland”, and questioning whether we were “ready for a blond Bond”. It seems absurd now that anyone would throw shade over Bond’s hair colour, because today the opposite is true – if producer Barbara Broccoli casts another blond Bond, she would be criticised for him not evolving enough.
Hairdo aside, Craig redefined the iconic role, turning Bond from a smooth twodimensional character, to a complex modernday man full of light and shade. He brought the spy’s emotional life on to the big screen for the first time – it had always been there in Ian Fleming’s books, but never in the movies.
Now, five films later, he’s hanging up his tuxedo and handing over the keys of his Aston Martin to another, as yet, unannounced driver.
The much-anticipated and pandemicdelayed No Time To Die premieres in London on Tuesday and Craig says he really goes out with a bang in it, as the movie ties up loose ends and brings his journey to a natural conclusion. He called the movies “the greatest honours of his life” and his tenure “only part of something bigger. I’m incredibly proud of every single one of them.”
The big question is, who will be the next Bond?
It’s a very different world today than 2006, when Craig proved all his doubters wrong.
He recalls the premiere in London’s Leicester Square, attended by the Queen, where he believed people only turned up to “watch a train wreck”.
It was, of course, anything but. At the end of the movie, “everybody started cheering and I’m welling up about it now,” he says on the new documentary Being James Bond. It became the highest-grossing Bond in history – a record later beaten by Skyfall.
And while we thought Craig’s Bond was different, the next chapter hasn’t even been written yet.
“The world has moved on, Commander Bond. So stay in your lane. Or I will put a bullet in your knee,” says Lashana Lynch in the trailer for No Time To Die, as Nomi, the female operative who has replaced Bond as 007. That it certainly has – but while producers are keeping tight-lipped about their next superspy, they have admitted Bond won’t be played by a woman.
Broccoli previously said: “James Bond can be of any colour, but he is male,” and Craig this week reiterated that opinion. “There should simply be better parts for women and actors of colour. Why should a woman play James Bond when there should be a part just as good as James Bond, but for a woman?” he told the Radio Times.
As to what they look for in a new Bond, it’s “somebody who can hold their own, who is attractive, physical, capable of taking on not just the part but all the razzmatazz that goes with it,” casting director Debbie McWilliams told Entertainment Weekly.
While the new Bond is top secret, actors getting use shaken and stirred include Venom’s Tom Hardy, Bridgerton’s Rege-Jean Page, Luther’s Idris Elba, Slumdog Millionaire’s Dev Patel, Peaky Blinders’ Cillian Murphy, Grantchester’s James Norton, Twilight’s Robert Pattinson, Bodyguard’s Richard Madden and Star Wars’ John Boyega.
Also being touted as in the running are Luke Evans, Sam Heughan, Tom Hiddleston, Michael Fassbender and Jack Lowden.
So, everyone who has ever acted, really. Despite Tom Hardy being “confirmed” in the role last year, at the moment all bets are off, although, Paddy Power does have odds of 10/1 for Chris Hemsworth becoming the next Aussie Bond, after George Lazenby. However, the betting agency also listed Russell Crowe at 500/1, the same odds as Prince Harry. The latter does know all about going On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, we suppose.
For now, it’s about bidding goodbye, finally, to Daniel Craig as he takes his curtain call as the longest-serving Bond. “I cannot imagine Bond after Daniel,” Broccoli says. Neither can we.