As we officially enter 2022 and a world where there is currently no one in the role of James Bond, considering Daniel Craig’s recent “No Time to Die” marks the end of his run as the character, fans of the spy franchise are busy speculating about who will take over the 007 mantle. But for now, let’s take a trip back to the pre-Craig era and learn about an acclaimed actor who actually talked about taking on the Bond role but it didn’t end up working out—Ralph Fiennes.
Speaking on the Happy. Sad. Confused. podcast, Ralph Fiennes talked at length about his relationship to the James Bond franchise. Of course, fans of 007 know that Fiennes has played the role of M dating back to Sam Mendes’ “Skyfall” film. However, before that and before Daniel Craig was in the tuxedo, Fiennes was in discussions with Barbara Broccoli and the Bond producers about a more prominent role.
“It’s a funny one,” he said about being included in Sam Mendes’ iteration of the James Bond series, “because actually, a while back, Barbara Brocolli once talked to me about possibly playing Bond, and that didn’t happen. But Sam Mendes directed ‘Skyfall’ and the pitch was very attractive at the time.”
As he said, he didn’t get the chance to play 007, but Fiennes was attracted to the Bond franchise nonetheless because he “already loved” Daniel Craig’s Bond and was attracted to Mendes’ “intelligence… ‘Skyfall’ was a great script.”
After “Skyfall’s” massive success, Fiennes was, of course, brought back for “Spectre.” However, in the planning stages of that film, it appears the actor found out that Mendes had some shocking ideas about where M should go.
“I think I can say now that I had to fight off an attempt by Sam in Spectre to make M – I said, ‘I don’t want to play M and then you turn around and make him the bad guy. M is never the bad guy,’” Fiennes insisted. “So I had to have some pretty intense discussions with Sam saying,
‘This is not flying with me.’ … It was like he was Blofeld or something, but that was a red line.”
Bond fans are a very passionate bunch, so it would have been really interesting to see how they would have reacted to the revelation that M was a Blofeld-esque baddie, or perhaps Blofeld himself. Alas, we’ll never know.
The conversation then went to another rumored role for Fiennes, but something that happened well before the Bond stuff—Batman. There were rumors that Fiennes was one of the select few that Joel Schumacher had in mind for the role of Batman for his “Batman Forever.” This is after Michael Keaton famously left the film.
The actor was asked about this rumor, but Fiennes was quick to dismiss saying, “I didn’t know that,” and didn’t elaborate.
Fiennes, of course, was able to marry the comic book world with the superspy world in the new film “The King’s Man,” which is in theaters now. Though, that film, as good as the franchise might be, pales in comparison to Batman and Bond.