One of the more high-profile roles in Hollywood to fill is going to be the next James Bond for director Denis Villeneuve‘s “Bond 26” (working title before that the real one is made official, usually announced alongside a press day and cast reveals), folks in media (trades and tabloids alike) have been scrambling to come up with wish-lists or what they think are frontunners (many names are sadly just guesses or weak baseline rumors). Now, Debbie McWilliams, who has worked as the casting director for the franchise for 40 years is giving her two-cents, and is recommending not hiring a well-known face to play the MI6 Agent (after in her tenure saw the hirings of Timothy Dalton, Pierce Brosnan, and Daniel Craig).
McWilliams (retiring after “No Time To Die“) now argues while speaking with The Independent that actors such as Callum Turner (“Masters of the Air,” “Neuromancer”) and Jacob Elordi (“The Dog Stars,” “Frankenstein”) are potentially being too high-profile contenders (mind you, they’ve only been rumored and haven’t been auditioned). Some other folks being mentioned in recent months are Cosmo Jarvis (“Shogun”) and Harris Dickenson (“Triangle of Sadness”), who are also in a similar position of the other two having a growing profile from popular projects.
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“It is absolutely essential that he retains a total enigma…I don’t want to see any of them as James Bond because we now know so much about them,” McWilliams said of Craig’s successor, adding that it should be “somebody who is completely out of the blue. We want to know as little about them personally as possible, because that’s what spies are. We don’t need to know where he goes shopping or who his parents are, or where he lives. We never want to see him at home. And a vital element of the whole thing is his job description. He’s licensed to kill, and we have to believe that he can do that. If you don’t, then you’ve lost the audience.”
We have to point out that only name that has actually auditioned to play James Bond for producers and Villeneuve has been stage actor Tom Francis, who is one of the lesser known names to hit the 007 radar since Amazon MGM Studios made their buyout to push out longtime franchise producers/production company EON Pictures. Francis is a tad more fitting under McWilliams’ hopes, as he’d likely would be seen as even more obscure than Craig was when he was selected back in the 2000s (Craig had already appeared in “Road To Perdition,” “Layer Cake,” “Munich,” and the first “Tomb Raider” film before “Casino Royale” was unleashed).
While it’s VERY unlikley to happen, there has been a growing call online to have the folks behind the reboot film to consider “007: First Light” actor Patrick Gibson (“The OA,” “Dexter: Original Sin,” Play Dead”) for the role, after the Amazon MGM-owned standalone/reboot video game has wowed both reviewers and regular gamers alike (some calling it the best licensed “Bond” game) with Gibson’s (a working actor in film and television from Dublin) performance being pointed out as a major highlight as he’s playing a younger rookie iteration of the spy (something we really haven’t seen before).
It remains to be seen what the newly hired casting director Nina Gold (“Game of Thrones”) thinks about McWilliams bar for finding the new James Bond, but a name like Francis feels like we’re unlikely going to have lesser known folks being in the mix, even if a studio wants bigger names to help with marketing. In the end, the Bond branding like with a character like “Batman” might not need someone well-known to inhabit the part, even more so when Villneueve is in the director’s chair (using a script penned by Steven Knight) after establishing himself that can deliver an event film such as “Bond 26.”
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