Lynch’s role in ‘No Time to Die’ came as surprise

NEW YORK — Lashana Lynch was in stunt training when she found out she was going to play a 00 agent in the James Bond film “No Time to Die.”

Lynch had already been cast by director Cary Joji Fukunaga and the producers, Barbara Broccoli and Michael Wilson. But who she was to play had remained a mystery to her. She was doing her best to prep for an undetermined but apparently buttkicking role.

“Nothing made sense. I’m plunged into stunts and they’re teaching me everything under the sun,” Lynch said in an interview.

Instead, Lynch just heard bits and pieces as she went. It felt, she says, like a TV series that carefully reveals a little each episode. Only when she was in the midst of summersaulting and firing fake guns did the full reveal come. Lynch would be the first Black woman to play a 00 agent in the six decades of James Bond movies.

Not only that, Lynch’s character, Nomi, takes the codename 007, with Daniel Craig’s James Bond AWOL and out of the British Secret Service.