Daniel Craig & Cary Fukunaga In Conversation: ‘No Time To Die,’ Awards & What’s Next [Interview]

Cliche aside, time flies. It’s hard to believe how much Daniel Craig’s James Bond tenure has popped up over my career as a journalist. I was barely in the game when I interviewed Martin Campbell for “Casino Royale.” I was beyond lucky enough to visit both “Quantum of Solace” sets in  Bregenz, Austria, and at Chile’s Paranal Observatory in the Atacama Desert. Because, hey, it’s one thing to talk to Craig in a hotel suite for an interview, but it’s another to chit-chat after he’s done an action scene as 007. And then, a few years later, we had the opportunity to watch Craig and Javier Bardem shoot this memorable scene in person at Pinewood Studios. All these years later, the world has changed in more ways than we can imagine, but Bond somehow lives on. Well, the character will eventually live on in someone else’s shoes after the events in “No Time To Die,” Craig’s final installment in the long-running franchise.

READ MORE: “No Time To Die”: Cary Fukunaga didn’t finish writing the film until post-production

Now, three months after “No Time’s” U.S. release, Craig and the film’s director, Cary Fukunaga, have joined a zoom conference for a thirty-minute chat about their well-received blockbuster. A film that has defied pandemic expectations at the box office ($774 million global) and surprised many by appearing on five of the Oscar shortlists (essentially everyone it qualified for) just a few weeks ago. Whether that love can translate into an unexpected Best Picture nomination remains to be seen, but Craig and Fukunaga certainly make their case in the context of our interview.

“No Time To Die” was originally set for release in April 2020, but due to the pandemic, it was delayed three more times before finally hitting theaters this past fall. Considering the tight deadline Fukunaga had in getting it to that initial 2020 finish line, I inquired if it was difficult for the filmmaker to return to the editing room to make a tweak here and there.

“It wasn’t hard. I was pretty done by March 2020. We had worked day and night to fine-tune that,” Fukunaga says. “We had two incredible editors and the sound team and everyone’s just making sure the movie was ready for audiences by April 2020. And there are always things you could tweak, moving the frames left and right on any film. Even when you’re writing a screenplay, if you leave something for long enough and come back to it, you can change everything. And re-watching the film now, every time I’ve had to re-watch the film since finishing it, there are little things I would probably change, but they’re never the same every time I watch it. So that’s when you know, that’s just how you feel in that moment. Like, ‘If I may be flipped those lines, the order lines, maybe the laugh would be more.’ Or something that you think could potentially be different but doesn’t really matter at the end of the day.”

Craig notes the tight schedule adding, “We were so under the cosh, weren’t we?

“Yeah,” Fukunaga replies.

“Because the original release date was so close to our wrap date,” Craig reveals. “Cary had literally no time. We were editing as we went. FX shots are very expensive, so we had to lock in takes.”

“Expensive and timely,” Fukunaga notes. “Basically, we had to lock FX shots before we even wrapped shooting. Because usually, it’s 12 weeks minimum from the moment that it goes into the pipeline, a shot to be scanned and blah, blah, blah and rotoed, et cetera, et cetera, to the moment. You can even note it 12 weeks. And then after that, you’re going to have iterations of it. So we had 16 weeks of post to give you a picture, 16 weeks from wrapping production to it being in cinemas. So I think it’s one of the fastest posts on films, and I don’t think it has the record, but it’s up there as one of the fastest.”

Over the course of our discussion, Craig and Fukunaga explain the justification for Bond’s fate in “No Time To Die,” the importance of his offspring, the contributions of a stellar crew (including standout production designer Mark Tildesley), and much more.

This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.

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The Playlist: First of all, knowing everything that went on with the pandemic delays and just knowing when the movie was going to come out, how are you feeling considering the reaction to the film? Considering outside of a little Spider-Man movie you were the biggest movie at the box office this year?

Daniel Craig: Clearly, it irks that “Spider-Man” has beaten us, but then, what can I do? [Laughs.] No, listen, everything’s gravy from this point on. The fact that we managed to get it into the cinemas is a minor miracle. Of course, in the grand scheme of things, does it matter? Not really. It’s just one of those things that would’ve gone into streaming and it would’ve been that. But it would’ve been a big shame and you can well imagine, I’m sure, the amount of effort that goes into making these things and the amount of skill and things just to put it up on the screen so people could go and see it. Just the fact that we actually managed to do that, it’s just a wonderful thing. And the fact that so many people got see it, seemed to enjoy it and all those things.

Cary Fukunaga: Same as Daniel is saying. A lot of times, there’s this tendency to measure the success of a film purely by the box office. And that doesn’t really take into account the emotional experience. And what people get to experience in a cinema is very different than had it just been a streaming or any other kind of platform release like that. Because of that collective experience in the audience, and because people returned to the cinemas more than once to see the film, those people will remember the experience of watching that film in a completely different way than had it never had that opportunity. And that’s not really measurable.

The Playlist: No, it’s not. But the reaction has certainly been visceral in terms of people who’ve seen it. Knowing that Bond was going to die at the end of it, how were you worried at all about how fans would react?

Cary Fukunaga: I was going to let you go first, Daniel. I have no idea about that.

Daniel Craig: That’s not the way we make movies. And anybody who does, good luck to them, but I would have absolutely no idea how to do that. I can’t second guess an audience. Worrying about, at the end of the day, what they think. Of course, they want to please as many people as possible. I would be, whatever the expression is, biting my nose off, despite my face, or cutting my nose off, despite my face. You make a movie that you hope will entertain, affect, and have an impact on all of those things, but to upset people, yeah, I’ve always wanted to upset people. I’ve wanted to upset them. I wanted to move them. I’ve wanted to get a reaction out of them. Pleasing people all the time, whatever the f**king saying is, and all of that, you can’t. When you’re working, you focus on what you’re doing and you make a commitment. That’s the hard thing about creativity, I suppose, is that at a certain point you have to go, “This is it.” You have to finish. You have to go, “This is it.” You have to present it.

The Playlist: How early on in the process for this film did you know that this is how your era of Bond, your era of Bond would end?

Daniel Craig: 2006.

The Playlist: Really?

Daniel Craig: Yeah. I have told this story. I’ll tell you again. For your sake, I hope it sounds like I’m telling it for the first time. I was driving with Barbara [Broccoli] in the back of a limousine away from the Berlin premiere of “Casino Royale,” and we were in a good mood because things were going well. Somehow, the movie was successful. People were enjoying it and I thought, “Oh, I didn’t have enough time to talk to the producer.” And I’d had this plan in my head. And I just said to her, “How many movies do I have to make?” Because I didn’t know because I never look at the contract. She said, “Four.” I said, “O.K.” I said, “Can I kill him off at the end of the fourth one, please?” It wasn’t the fourth one, but it’s the fifth one. And she said, “Yes.” She said yes. And I had it there for a number of reasons. I wanted for many reasons. One, because I felt like it would be a good ending for me, personally, so I could move on. I could say, “O.K, I can’t go back to that. This is it. This is.” I was trying to protect my future in my head because I realized how much this was going to change my life when I was trying to grab some control and say, “O.K, right now I can move to a point and work to that point, then I’ll be good with this.” The other thing is, as I said to Barbara, “You had a real great chance with ‘Casino Royale’ because you’d never done it before to start at the beginning, and you don’t have that choice anymore. So if we reset it, you can do whatever the f**k you want. You can start from the beginning. You can go back, you can go forward, you can do whatever you want.” It was partly selfish, but it was also kind of trying to think to protect the franchise a little bit.

The Playlist: Was this something that you discussed even casually over the years working on the other films?

Daniel Craig: Absolutely. When I came him off at the end of “Quantum of Solace,” [the answer was] no. When I came off “Skyfall,” no. Came off at the end of “Spectre,” no. This one was a yes. So it was a conversation. We didn’t have it all the time. When Cary came on board, we had it as an idea. And as we spoke, we spoke about it the other day. If we hadn’t have found the right ending, we wouldn’t have done it. It wasn’t a set in stone thing. It was an idea, one of a few ideas that we had. It was the main idea, and we kept on coming back to it, but we did work towards another thing. We had to find the right way for it to happen. If we hadn’t have found, I think, a pretty good way of ending, then we wouldn’t have done it.

The Playlist: I think one of the things that touched viewers is the recognition before Bond dies, that clearly, he has a daughter, he has left something in the world, something positive that can grow. When did that aspect come into the writing process?

Cary Fukunaga: That was early on. That idea had been floating around for a while as well. If you’ve read the Fleming books and “You Only Live Twice,” Bond also has a daughter in that book, and “You Only Live Twice” is the last book. So if you think of “Casino” to “You Only Live Twice,” there’s a lot of parity here between what we’ve done with Daniel’s films. And I think that’s the other part. You can’t ignore the fact that previous Bonds didn’t really have a start to finish storyline. It’s almost like if you think about syndicated television back in the day, it’s characters that exist, but different stories every time. When Daniel started his run, all the stories connected in a way they never had before. And that allowed for building upon previous films, building upon character relationships, building upon plot and story and the complexity of what you could do then in that world.

The Playlist: I know that it’s a relatively new phenomenon that people pay attention to these Oscar shortlists. I don’t know if you have. I’m assuming maybe you are aware that you are the only film that qualified for every single shortlist that it could.

Daniel Craig: Oh, no.

Cary Fukunaga: I’m in the Academy and I still don’t know these things.

The Playlist: It was dropped before Christmas. I’m surprised they didn’t send you a memo.

Daniel Craig: I’m off the list. That’s very good news.

The Playlist: It may be a stupid question, it probably is, but does the fact that your peers respect all the work that’s been done so far in the film mean anything to you?

Daniel Craig: It’s massive. Listen, I’m proud of this movie for all sorts of reasons, but mainly because of the talent that we attracted to come and work on it. And I think everybody in this movie that is up for something should be up for something. We’ve been doing some press, and we’ve had a chance to sit with heads of department, Hans Zimmer and our editors, our sound editors, Linus [Sandgren] and Cary, obviously, talking about sections of the movie. It’s a pretty amazing piece of work. And I know the whole idea of giving awards to movies like this is a bit, I don’t know what it is. It seems to be a difficult conversation. I don’t know why it is. I don’t really understand why. I think it deserves to be recognized. And I think there are people who worked on this movie that deserve to be recognized because they’ve done an incredible job. It’s a very beautiful, impactful, successful movie. So it should be up for awards.

The Playlist: Cary, what do you think?

Cary Fukunaga: A similar thing. You don’t want to be sitting there saying, “I deserve an award.” But at the same time, you also want to be recognized. And I think you want to be recognized by your peers because it’s incredibly difficult to do these projects. You sacrifice a lot of your life, years of your life. Daniel more than anyone here, and you want that work somehow to have resonance beyond the people in your life who had to suffer your absence. You want there to be something that’s recognized on a larger cultural level for your contribution to the conversation and the movement of culture in this time and place. That being said, my feeling about awards is, quite often the films I felt deserved awards didn’t get recognized in their time, and that didn’t really matter because great films continue to be watched and re-watched, even when they’re not recognized in the time period in which they came out.

Daniel Craig: That’s a very good thing to say.

The Playlist: You mentioned how difficult it is to make these films. We watch them and we’re like, “Oh, it’s a big-budget set piece. Hollywood studios know how to pull these off.” Was there one in particular or a sequence or maybe even just a shot that you’re like, “I still can’t believe we got this”?

Cary Fukunaga: Every single day is difficult and even sometimes the most banal seeming scene is difficult. We’re jumping around locations. Just think about the day we were in Westminster shooting outside the Department of Defense lobby. We went to four different locations that day. And then we shot the exterior, I think, of Ben [Whishaw]‘s place down in Waterloo. You think you have all this time.

Daniel Craig: And listen, I very loathe getting into conversations about how hard it is to shoot a movie. It’s hard to shoot a movie. Anything decent that’s worth doing is a difficult job, but also, it’s the best job in the world. It really is. I love my job. Being able to go to set and work on a Bond movie is like… I say it all the time. I still had to, every time I walked on set, pinch myself, thinking, “What the hell am I doing here? This is incredible.” And to walk onto Mark Tildesley’s sets lit by Linus, just standing in front of Ben Whishaw or Lea Seydoux or Ana de Armas or Ralph Fiennes and just go, “How bad can this be?”

Cary Fukunaga: Yeah.

The Playlist: Well, let me ask in a less difficult context. Talking about the stunning sets on a film, is there one that if you could tell people who were in the production design branch to put a spotlight on and like, “Look what this guy did. Look how stunning this is.” Maybe in person, it was even more impressive than it appeared on screen?

Cary Fukunaga: I could say, quite often you might recognize the more elaborate, more extensive sets involved hundreds and hundreds of craftsmen, very talented craftsmen, painters, whatever, scenics, to put together foam sculptures, all these things like to build, for example, the entire Santiago de Cuba set. But there’s also the seamlessness that the magic of cinema that Tildesley also accomplishes. Every single location we went to, we did something to that location, whether it was building a house on the lake in Norway or building Daniel’s Bond retreat in Jamaica, all those were constructed. They were designed, built, and placed…

Daniel Craig: From the ground up.

Cary Fukunaga: In Matera, we did all kinds of things in Matera, that it’s part real Matera and then part Bond fantasy. There is no cave that drives into Matera. Tildesley built a cave that goes into Matera. It’s things that you just would take for granted, and you should take for granted when you watch it, because the idea is, it’s sanded so smooth, you don’t notice the seam.

Daniel Craig: I think that it’s when it’s done so well, which is what it was, is that you look at… I would say that apart from the locations that are obvious, most of what we shot on were sets and people didn’t know they were sets because they were so beautifully constructed and they looked like they’d been there for years and that’s the kind of genius of Mark Tildesley.

Cary Fukunaga: You think about the sub pen at the very end, you’re on that set, you’re entering and exiting that set. That’s it. And we have this amazing set that’s sinking into the sea and…

Daniel Craig: It’s all pitched and at an angle like this.

Cary Fukunaga: Yeah. In and out.

Daniel Craig: That actually is one of my favorite sets, that, I think. That submarine pen. Just because we had a submarine pen in a Bond movie, I guess. Hallelujah.

The Playlist: Obviously, you make the movie, you have this finish line that you’re trying to get to at the end, you know the movie is coming out on a certain date and then the pandemic happens, and it gets pushed back a number of times. As a filmmaker, Cary, how hard is it to know, “God I could go in and just cut this one little scene I wanted to cut by 10 seconds or move this sound cue over here…” And maybe you did but how hard was it to not pick the pencil back up and fiddle?

Cary Fukunaga: It wasn’t hard. I was pretty done by March 2020. We had worked day and night to fine-tune that. We had two incredible editors and the sound team and everyone’s just making sure the movie was ready for audiences by April 2020. And there are always things you could tweak, moving the frames left and right on any film. Even when you’re writing a screenplay, if you leave something for long enough and come back to it, you can change everything. And re-watching the film now, every time I’ve had to re-watch the film since finishing it, there are little things I would probably change, but they’re never the same every time I watch it. So that’s when you know, that’s just how you feel in that moment. Like, “If I may be flipped those lines, the order lines, maybe the laugh would be more.” Or something that you think could potentially be different but doesn’t really matter at the end of the day.

Daniel Craig: We were so under the cosh, weren’t we?

Cary Fukunaga: Yeah.

Daniel Craig: Because the original release date was so close to our wrap date. Cary had literally no time. We were editing as we went. FX shots are very expensive, so we had to lock in takes.

Cary Fukunaga: Expensive and timely. Basically, we had to lock FX shots before we even wrapped shooting. Because usually, it’s 12 weeks minimum from the moment that it goes into the pipeline, a shot to be scanned and blah, blah, blah and rotoed, et cetera, et cetera, to the moment. You can even note it 12 weeks. And then after that, you’re going to have iterations of it. So we had 16 weeks of post to give you a picture, 16 weeks from wrapping production to it being in cinemas. So I think it’s one of the fastest posts on films, and I don’t think it has the record, but it’s up there as one of the fastest.

The Playlist: So, I’m going to guess that when the stay-at-home order came through you were ready for that decompression anyway.

Cary Fukunaga: The biggest bummer was not being able to celebrate the zone with everyone. That was the main bummer. To sit on it and wait obviously was a trial in patience, and like Daniel said, it was out of our control what the powers that be might decide to do with the film. And that’s why we’re very thankful to MGM-

Daniel Craig: And also the pandemic, which was just more important.

Cary Fukunaga: Yeah. There were bigger things happening, obviously in the world.

Daniel Craig: We were not in control of that.

The Playlist: Cary, I know that Barbara has done interviews where she said she would love to have you come back either for the next film or potentially down the road. Is that something that you would be interested in or do you feel like this is the perfect chapter to also end your Bond tenure?

Cary Fukunaga: It’s hard to say. As difficult as it was, it’s also one of the highlights of my working career. I think part of that is due to the fact, as Daniel said, we worked with such amazing people and I just did a project between then and now, and it’s really great to have that comparison and remembering every single member of that crew loved what they did. Do you know what I mean? They really put their all and you saw that in the work that came back and the passion and the dedication. Whether it was props or scenic or whatever, every single crew member. And you don’t really get that. I can’t really think of any other filmmaking franchise that has that kind of esprit de corps.
And that goes to the entire nation when you’re shooting in the UK. Everyone loves the fact that they love their Bond. And so to say, “Oh, I’d never do it again.” It’s impossible to say that because right now, I’m obviously pretty tired from the last one still, but who knows in the future? It’s a very special thing to be a part of.

The Playlist: This Bond very much fit this era of the post 9/11 world power structure and was much different than the Pierce Brosnan era or the ones before it. With where the world is going now, do you have any thoughts on the direction of the franchise as a cultural reset?

Daniel Craig: Not my problem.

The Playlist: That’s a good answer.

Cary Fukunaga: It’s very interesting talking to Barbara and Michael. Eon has this office on Piccadilly, which is rumored to be like… Wasn’t it rumored at one point, it was an American embassy at one point or something. It has a storied history, the house.

Daniel Craig: Yeah.

Cary Fukunaga: But just sitting there, Michael G. Wilson gets these political journals in the mail all the time, like RUSI and things like that. They’re very tapped into geopolitics and history and science and technology. And you could say all the Bond films are of a certain world, but every Bond film, when it comes out is also kind of speaking to where the world’s going in the near future. And it’s very hard to guess right now what that might be the next time everyone sits around that table again and discusses what is a thing that’s most scary, that frightens us to our bones about what the world is facing right now because that’s essentially what Bond goes up against.

The Playlist: I have two last questions for you. First Daniel, is there anything that you can tease about “Knives Out 2”?

Daniel Craig: No, nothing. [Laughs.] Listen, it’s in the can. Rian’s in the editing suite. He’s putting it together. It’s coming together. I’m very excited about it. Again, we had just a phenomenal cast, so, talk to Rian [Johnson] about it. He’ll tell you nothing as well about it.

The Playlist: And Cary, is “Masters of Air” still coming out this year?

Cary Fukunaga: I know Apple would love for it to come out this year. There’s just, we’re dealing with COVID as well still. We had several delays and now we’re dealing with post delays because of can’t do in-person editing. So, there’s a lot of things that probably affect when that comes out, but my part is in the can.

“No Time To Die” is available for digital download.