Previously, whenever our emotionally unavailable hero falls for someone it usually results in the death of the woman in question

deaths served as narrative propulsion for 007 – the entire plot of Quantum Of Solace, sequel to 2006’s Casino Royale, was predicated upon Bond avenging Vesper’s death.

“It’s true,” Seydoux admits, also stressing that things are different now. Bond’s fridging days are over. “It’s a love story this time,” she says.

No Time To Die might be the first Bond film to be released in the post-Time’s Up era, but it’s not the only time the super-slick franchise has wrestled with the notion of feminism. In the 80s and 90s, some efforts were made to transform Bond girls from mere titillation into complex characters capable of saving the world on their own. Grace Jones’s May Day, Michelle Yeoh’s Wai Lin and Halle Berry’s Jinx Johnson took their Bonds (Roger Moore and Pierce Brosnan, respectively) down a few pegs, while adding some much-needed diversity to the franchise. No female filmmaker has ever directed a Bond movie. The only two women other than Waller-Bridge who have come within a martini shake of a Bond script are Dana Stevens, who worked uncredited on 1999’s The World Is Not Enough, and Johanna Harwood, who co-wrote Dr No and From Russia With Love in the 60s.

Waller-Bridge’s contributions in shaping this new era of James Bond are already being felt. The writer worked with Lynch and de Armas to workshop their characters: Lynch mooted the idea of having Nomi dispose of a tampon in one scene. For de Armas’s character Paloma, Waller-Bridge brought a jittery, flawed relatability that the Cuban actor craved. “You could also tell that Phoebe was in there,” she told Vanity Fair. “There was that humour and spikiness so specific to her.”

No Time To Die opens in Matera, where a retired Bond seems content spending his life in anonymity with Madeleine. “Then the troubles happen,” Seydoux says with a laugh. Madeleine has been keeping secrets from Bond, ones that will threaten the foundation of their relationship. “I think in this [film] we see her vulnerability,” Seydoux explains. “In Spectre, she was protecting herself and put up a barrier. But then she falls in love.”

What is it about Bond that has Madeleine swooning? Everything about 007 is a red flag: commitment-phobe, disastrous dating history, married to the job. Why Bond? “Um, that is a good question,” Seydoux says, chuckling. “I don’t know. I think that it’s hard to explain love, no?” Seydoux pauses. “Maybe she has this thing where it is stronger … It’s not a reasonable thing to love James Bond, but it’s like that and she can’t do anything about it.”

With Craig stepping down from the role after No Time To Die, the franchise is in flux. “Everyone was very moved,” Seydoux says, of Craig’s final performance. The rumour mill discussing his replacement never stops. James Norton? Richard Madden? Henry Golding? Riz Ahmed? “Mmmmmm,” Seydoux ponders, asked if she has any thoughts about who should replace Craig. “Sorry, I don’t know,” she offers, sounding very much as if she does.

One thing is certain, though, the era of the Bond girl, with all the thinly veiled sexism that entails, is over. Not even Craig likes to use the term anymore. “I can’t have a sensible conversation with somebody if we’re talking about ‘Bond girls’,” he said recently.

“They used to be like sexual objects,” Seydoux agrees, of the female characters in the Bond films. Not so with No Time To Die, though. Madeleine and Bond have true “intimacy” and her character is a “real woman”, Seydoux stresses. “She’s not stereotyped, she’s not a cliché.” At the completion of filming, Seydoux burst into tears. “It was very emotional at the end,” she recalls. “My character goes through a lot of emotions, big emotions. But it’s also a human adventure, too, to work on a film. So it always feels moving when it’s over.”

No Time To Die is out in cinemas on November 12. the

ASHLEIGH WILSON

(MODERATOR)

Wilson is a Walkley Award-winning journalist, former arts editor at The Australian and author of Brett Whiteley: Art, Life and the Other Thing, and the short essay book On Artists.

LEE LEWIS Lewis took the reins as artistic director of the Queensland Theatre Company in 2020, having garnered critical acclaim as artistic director and CEO of Sydney’s Griffin Theatre Company.

“I’m going to begin our discussion with a production I was reminded of when a bus went past almost mockingly. On it was an ad for La Traviata, which was scheduled to open on Sydney Harbour in March but fell victim to the virus like the rest of the performing arts industry. Shutdown was almost overnight and the economic impact has been extreme, but first I wanted to ask about the absence of live performance from the world. Lyndon Terracini, as artistic director of Opera Australia, how can we measure that?”

“It’s difficult to measure at any given time, because fundamentally, it’s changed significantly. But it’s interesting you mention the poster of La Traviata on the bus – our last show was on March 14th and I will remember that night for the rest of my life. Initially, I think people felt [lockdown] would be a couple of weeks, but then it gradually impacted people. You know, questioning ‘what is the future?’, and ‘will we ever get back into a theatre?’ We’ve got more than 500 people who we’re supporting on JobKeeper, which is great, but frankly, once you’ve had a few coffees in Sydney, you’ve used it all up.

“[Opera Australia] has had some very good years, but all those reserves will be gone and then what do we do? You also have to think about the individual artists in terms of being vigilant in monitoring people and seeing how they’re going. People have mortgages, rent to pay, families, all that sort of thing. But at the crux of all this is also the fact artists fundamentally aren’t interested in JobKeeper. They just want to perform, they want to do a show.

“At the moment I think the helplessness of it all is affecting people terribly. Artists have never been in this situation and they’re coming in looking for answers and I can’t give them any. But the thing is,

ASHLEIGH WILSON: LYNDON TERRACINI:

LYNDON TERRACINI AM Terracini has been artistic director of Opera Australia since 2009 following a career as an operatic baritone, actor, director and writer. He has previously served as artistic director of Queensland Music Festival and the Brisbane Festival.

because we support an orchestra and chorus and everyone else who works for other organisations, if you lose an orchestra, if you lose a chorus, you’re losing people who are particularly adept at technically making a theatre work. If you’ve lost all that knowledge when you finally come back to work, you’ve got nothing.”

“Iain Grandage, a festival director makes it their business to talk to artists from as many disciplines as possible. How are artists coping over in WA?”

“We do two things at a festival. Firstly, we commission artists to create specific work so when we are on the other side of this, there will be content. But the second thing is that we’re aggregators of experiences. There’s a sense that we are the builders of community that happens between an audience and a performer; we’re intrinsic to the completion of that triangle of a work of art between the creator. An audience through a screen quite simply isn’t the same.

“The joy of sharing an experience inside a concert hall is inescapable and it’s the essence of the festival and performing arts that people want. This act of creating into a screen is, in the end, debilitating. So as we talk to artists, there is this immense stress on people’s mental health and on their capacity to enjoy community.

“There is the capacity for them to create, but the expectation that creation can happen when we’re watching the world go to shit is another layer of pressure on artists. [The idea of] ‘Look, you’ve got all this time you should be enjoying it.’ Artists are fountainheads: if there is no hope in the world then the art’s going to come out very different.

“There are a lot of elements in that answer, but the short answer being we speak to artists and many of them are enjoying the

AW:

IAIN GRANDAGE Grandage is a highly celebrated and award-winning composer, music director and curator. In 2018 he was announced as artistic director of the Perth Festival from 2020 to 2023.

IAIN GRANDAGE:

MICHAEL CASSEL Cassel is an internationally recognised entertainment executive who has produced and presented some of the world’s biggest musical and theatrical productions through his company, the Michael Cassel Group.