Glance over the names of the rumoured James Bond contenders, and aren’t they all, well, a bit starry? Oscar nominee Jacob Elordi? Paparazzi magnet and recent Dua Lipa betrothed Callum Turner?
Future cinematic John Lennon, Harris Dickinson? All attractive propositions from a headline-grabbing perspective, but maybe wrong for a role designed to be slippery and mysterious – and which, bar Roger Moore at the time he was cast as 007 in 1972, has always been filled by an actor who was vaguely recognisable but wasn’t yet super-duper famous. Retired casting director Debbie McWilliams, who helped put Timothy Dalton, Pierce Brosnan and Daniel Craig in the tuxedo over the years, certainly agreed, telling The Independent in June that “it is absolutely essential that [Bond] retains a total enigma,” adding: “I don’t want to see [Elordi, Turner, Dickinson et al] 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 … 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.” And this also chimes with reports last year that filmmaker Denis Villeneuve, who will allegedly be finalising his Bond following a series of screen tests with different actors in August, is looking for “an unknown” Brit possibly in his late twenties or early thirties to play 007.
Which probably rules out the Paul Mescals of the world. So, with that in mind, we’ve gathered together a list of actually realistic contenders for the role, some based on mysterious appearances in the betting odds, others based on my own (probably incorrect but pfft) intuition. On Wednesday (26 August), Page Six of The New York Post published a report on the imminent Bond screen tests (scheduled for early September, allegedly) and claimed that a host of actors were due to take part.
They included the usual names, such as Callum Turner and Paul Mescal (the latter of which suggests this might be bogus), but also one Jack Barton. The 31-year-old actor, who trained at the Oxford School of Drama, has very few credits to his name, the most high-profile being the role of, um, “Fop” in the Emma Stone movie Poor Things, and his recurring gig as the older brother to Kit Connor’s Nick on Netflix’s Heartstopper. Intriguingly, though, Barton also starred in the second series of BBC One’s SAS: Rogue Heroes last year – a show written by none other than new Bond scribe Steven Knight.
Or might we be looking at the “unknown Brit” Villeneuve has chosen to be his 007? Perhaps Tom Francis just has a very good publicist who knows how to raise their client’s profile, or the Olivier-award winning actor has zoomed up the bookies’ odds because he’s actually in for a chance here. We first saw his name linked to the role in May, in a Variety news item that claimed the West End leading man (who you may remember from Jamie Lloyd’s Sunset Boulevard redo) had auditioned for Bond.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
