Alright: pay attention, new 007 speculators. Here are some actors who will not – repeat, not – be playing the new 007 James Bond any time soon. Idris Elba. Jamie Dornan. Riz Ahmed. Cillian Murphy. John Boyega. Robert Pattinson. Matt Smith. Tom Hardy. Tom Hiddleston. Tom Holland. Tom Burke.
The guessing over who will next fill this lucrative government post got underway again this week, thanks to comments made by Barbara Broccoli and Michael G Wilson, 007’s long-serving custodians. With Daniel Craig’s version of the character now out of the picture for – spoiler alert – missile-strike reasons, a new lead must be found. But as Broccoli noted at a press event, prospective candidates have to be in it for the long haul.
“When we cast Bond, it’s a 10- to 12-year commitment,” she said, after one journalist suggested that 50-year-old Elba’s moment had arrived. “He’s probably thinking, ‘Do I really want that thing?’ Not everybody wants to do that.” (Craig’s own Covid-prolonged incumbency lasted 15 years: he was 37 when filming began on Casino Royale.) The process, she said, is still in its “early days”, and filming on the 26th entry is unlikely to begin for “at least two years”.
Craig’s successor will likely have proven himself in a vaguely Bond-like role – Craig had Layer Cake, Pierce Brosnan had five series of Remington Steele – but still be affordable, and amenable to building the second act of his career around a gig that previous holders have made clear has its ups and downs.
As Broccoli has repeatedly confirmed, he will also be a he. (Sorry, Emily Blunt fans.) And while he may have an existing profile as hunk or thesp, it should still be containable by the Aston Martin and tailoring. At this point, Tom Hardy in a dinner jacket is just Tom Hardy in a dinner jacket, no matter what cocktail he drinks.
Together, these conditions rule out the supposedly “likely contenders” listed above. But there are four other intriguing prospects. The first is London’s Regé-Jean Page: 34 years old, a CIA agent in Netflix’s The Gray Man and a heartthrob in Bridgerton. The second is Henry Golding: 35, born in Malaysia and raised in Surrey, with suave comic chops (Crazy Rich Asians, Last Christmas, The Gentlemen) and a degree of underworld assassin experience (Snake Eyes).
Third, less commonly touted, is Micheal Ward, a highly castable 24, born in Ian Fleming’s beloved Jamaica and raised in London and Essex. And fourth, there’s Thomas Doherty, 27, with franchise experience (he plays Captain Hook’s son in the Disney+ Descendants films), and who, like Sean Connery, was born and raised in Edinburgh – and whose face has something of Connery’s suave cruelty.
While as recently as Craig’s casting, a non-white Bond would have been unthinkable, Broccoli has said that race should be no barrier to the part. But more broadly, there’s a balance to be struck. As the world order boils and resettles, the idea that Britain still covertly has its hand on the tiller lands differently today than it once did.
When Fleming dreamt up Bond in the early 1950s, that notion was already a comforting throwback. Evolve too far past that, and our man in Wherever He Ends Up Next could be anyone.
