The woman responsible for casting three of James Bond’s most beloved actors has made her feelings clear about the current favorites for the role and she doesn’t want any of them.
Debbie McWilliams, the veteran casting director who worked on Bond films for 40 years and discovered Timothy Dalton, Pierce Brosnan and Daniel Craig for the role, has said she would not like to see Jacob Elordi, Callum Turner or Harris Dickinson play the iconic spy.
talking to the independentMcWilliams, who retired before Amazon acquired the franchise, was candid about why.
“I don’t want to see any of them as Bond because we know a lot about them now,” he said.
“It’s absolutely essential that Bond maintain a total enigma. We want to know as little as possible about them personally, 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 has a license to kill, and we have to believe he can do it. If you don’t, then you’ve lost your audience.”
All three actors – Elordi who is currently dating Kendall Jenner, Turner newly married to Dua Lipa and Dickinson, a rising star with a growing public profile – have become familiar presences in the tabloids, which McWilliams sees as precisely the problem.
He pointed to his own discoveries as evidence of what works.
“Timothy and Pierce weren’t particularly well-known. Daniel had had a career in independent films and a pretty colorful romantic life before, but he wasn’t a household name, and that helps enormously.”
His recipe for the next Bond is surprisingly simple: “I want to see someone who comes completely out of nowhere.”
On the question of whether Bond should remain a man, he was equally firm.
“That’s how Ian Fleming wrote it. Why would you want to change that? They haven’t changed Harry Potter to Alice Potter or a different ethnicity. That’s how it was written and that’s how it should stay, I think.”
The search for the next 007 is officially underway.
Amazon confirmed in May that casting had begun, with Denis Villeneuve directing the franchise’s 26th installment.
Casting director Nina Gold, whose credits include game of Thrones and the casting of Daisy Ridley as King in Star Wars: The Force Awakenslead the search.
The script is being written by Peaky Blinders creator Steven Knight, with Amy Pascal and David Heyman producing.
McWilliams may no longer be in the room where it happens, but given his history, it’s worth listening to his instincts.
