The hunt for James Bond is on. Even though it has been years since Daniel Craig ended his run with a bang in No Time to Die, a year since Amazon bought the rights from Eon Productions, and months since Denis Villeneuve was announced as the next director, apparently the search for the next 007 has just now begun in earnest. Amazon MGM has named Nina Gold as the casting director. In a statement released through Variety, the studio said, “While we don’t plan to comment on specific details during the casting process, we’re excited to share more news with 007 fans as soon as the time is right.”
Such is their prerogative as a movie studio. But it’s our prerogative as fans to do our own casting. And because we don’t have to worry about things like budgets, schedules, and franchise plans, we can get as wild as we want. So here are five unusual, but ultimately realistic, choices to play James Bond.
A quick note on the word “realistic”: six different male actors have played Bond since 1962’s Dr. No, and although Amazon MGM is not Eon Productions, they’ll likely follow suit. Moreover, James Bond was imagined by Ian Fleming as a blunt instrument of the British empire, a quality that has remained part of the character, even as the edges are sanded down. Modern Bond stories tend to ignore the degree to which Bond kills people to advance England’s colonial and capitalist interests. And while Amazon is happy to produce The Boys, they likely won’t want audiences thinking too much about how Bond is a colonizer.
Which is to say that Bond will probably be another white British man, and so that’s what we’re sticking with here. But that doesn’t mean we can’t get a little weird daydreaming, at least until Gold has found her man.
George Mackay
Easily the most likely of the choices on this list, George Mackay has two strikes against him when looking at traditional Bond candidates. First, his hair is too light. Second, his face is too distinctive. If you think these are silly complaints, well… they are silly complaints. But do a little digging to find the reaction to Craig’s casting 20 years ago, and you’ll find plenty of griping about the actor’s hair color and ear shape. All this despite the fact that the Bond novels by Fleming compare the spy to Hoagy Carmichael, a man with a longer face and wider ears than Sean Connery or Pierce Brosnan.
Moreover, Craig showed that a distinctive look can make for a distinctive Bond, especially if the actor has the chops to suggest sorrow in his cold eyes. Mackay certainly fits the bill here. After debuting as a Lost Boy in 2003’s Peter Pan, Mackay has gone on to do impressive work in independent films, earning acclaim for Femme and The Beast, with 1917 being his most well-known movie. It would be quite the leap to go from those productions to a franchise picture helmed by Villeneuve, but Mackay would have just the right energy to be an off-beat leading man in a unique Bond flick.
Josh O’Connor
As long as we’re talking about Bonds with idiosyncratic appearances, let’s consider Josh O’Connor. Unlike McKay, O’Connor has a higher profile, having played major roles in Challengers, Wake Up Dead Man, and the upcoming Steven Spielberg film Disclosure Day. But ever since Villeneuve landed the directing gig—reversing Eon’s tendency to deny big name filmmakers such as Spielberg, Quentin Tarantino, and Danny Boyle—a B- or A-list star doesn’t seem impossible.
With his lanky frame, curly hair, and pronounced ears, O’Connor certainly doesn’t fit the usual Bond mold. But O’Connor does have an off-kilter energy that captures something about the secret agent. Anyone who has watched a Bond film knows that 007 isn’t a spy, not really. He walks right into the bad guy’s lair and introduces himself with his real name. He succeeds in his missions thanks to his ability to charm everyone, from women to the villains themselves, even when it doesn’t make sense. O’Connor has just that type of appeal.
Jack O’Connell
Bond films tend to be either serious and brutal or goofy and slick. After five Craig movies that fell into the former category, conventional wisdom suggested that the pendulum would swing toward the lighthearted. But with Villeneuve as director, Bond isn’t going to be driving submarine cars anytime soon, which means that we need another 007 in the mold of Connery and Craig. And if there’s one thing those two actors brought to the character, it’s a sense of danger.
No young British actor has been as charming and scary onscreen as Jack O’Connell. Whether playing an ageless Irish vampire in Sinners or the charitable killer Sir Jimmy in 28 Years Later, O’Connell is at once alluring and unnerving. Moreover, there’s a roughness to O’Connell that can remind viewers that Bond didn’t grow up in the lap of luxury. He’s the son of an arms company rep, and was shuffled around after he lost his parents at the age of eleven. O’Connell can clean up nice, slicking back his hair and slipping into a tux. But he can retain that edge of menace necessary, a reminder that no matter how many martinis he enjoys, Bond always carries a license to kill.
Matt Smith
If we’re talking about unique physiology combined with the ability to play charming and menacing, then we have to look at Matt Smith. Yes, the guy from Doctor Who, House of the Dragon, and, of course, Morbius. Smith oozes charisma that made him a delightful Doctor and a terrifying Targaryen. If he put those qualities together, then he would be the ideal Bond. Don’t believe me? Just look at any of his scenes from Edgar Wright‘s Last Night in Soho, in which he was at once the coolest guy in the room and the one with murder in his heart.
Furthermore, Smith fits the profile of an ideal Bond actor. Like Roger Moore and Pierce Brosnan before him, Smith has a strong television career, but hasn’t yet become a movie star. He has just enough cache to bring in fans and to do the work, but not so much that the actor will overshadow the character.
Pierce Brosnan
No, I didn’t make a mistake. What if we just brought back Brosnan? Despite starring in two of the worst Bond films, Brosnan never gave up his love for the character and wanted to keep playing the part, even after the disaster that was Die Another Day. As long as No Time to Die already requires a continuity shift, and as long as the movie has Villeneuve on board, a filmmaker who will likely make a single idiosyncratic film instead of a standard franchise entry, why not bring Brosnan back for something different?
Imagine Old Man Bond, the story of a once dashing spy forced to contend with a world he doesn’t understand. Brosnan never totally left the world of espionage and secret service, having appeared in The Matador and in last year’s excellent Black Bag. It wouldn’t be a great leap for him, and it would give Villeneuve a chance to tell a very different type of Bond story.
Plus, it would give Amazon MGM just a little more time to pick their next long-running Bond, since they seem to be making that decision as slowly as possible.
