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Legendary casting director Debbie McWilliams, who recently retired from casting, has spoken about the criteria the next James Bond actor should have.
Among her many achievements, including discovering Daniel Day-Lewis for his breakthrough film “My Beautiful Laundrette,” McWilliams worked as casting director on the Bond franchise for forty years – from the Roger Moore effort “For Your Eyes Only” through to Daniel Craig’s final film “No Time to Die”.
In her time, she helped cast Craig, Pierce Brosnan and Timothy Dalton in the Bond role. With the second round of auditions for the new Bond to begin in August, talk is still swirling about names such as Callum Turner, Harris Dickinson and Jacob Elordi.
Speaking with The Independent, she said Day-Lewis on the surface would’ve made a great Bond back in the day: “he has that stature and enigma, but it’s so not his thing, he’s such an intellectual, he would have driven himself completely round the bend.”
McWilliams says one key to the casting is that “it is absolutely essential that he retains a total enigma”. That’s why she’s not a fan of the rumored names so far:
“I don’t want to see any of them as Bond because we now know so much about them. 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.”
She says Dalton and Brosnan “weren’t particularly well known” while Craig “had a career in independent films and a fairly colourful romantic life beforehand, but he wasn’t a household name.” What she wants instead is “to see somebody who is completely out of the blue”.
McWilliams recalled that Craig was “such an unpopular choice… nobody supported it. Not the studio. Not the director.” It all changed after “Casino Royale” came out, McWilliams saying: “don’t ask the people who they want, because they won’t know.”
Nina Gold is serving as casting director on the new Bond film, which Denis Villeneuve is set to direct for Amazon MGM Studios.
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