Daniel Craig was brutally honest when asked who he thinks should play James Bond next: “I don’t care.” The actor sat down with Variety to promote his new movie Queer, along with his co-star Drew Starkey. When the subject of Agent 007 came up, Craig made it clear that he was checked out.
When asked who he would prefer to play Bond next, Craig laughed before answering: “I don’t care.” Starkey laughed as well, chuckling and glancing sidelong at Craig. They changed the subject from there, but this is not the first time Craig has been dismissive of the spy franchise. He is the sixth actor to play Bond, taking the role in his late 30s in 2006 and acting in five movies before ending in 2021 with No Time to Die. He emphasized the finality of that movie, and has continued to do so ever since.
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“I had an incredibly fortunate 17 years of my life making this,” Craig told the BBC in 2022. “I literally want to spend the next 20 years of my life trying to unhook it all and try and put it into a place because it was incredible. I left it where I wanted it to be. And that I was given the chance to do that with the last movie.”
From the beginning, Craig seemed to have reservations about taking this historic role. According to a report by The Guardian, Craig was wary of the massive franchise, fearing it would be inflexible and demanding. He also worried about being typecast, and about being associated with a franchise that was notoriously chauvinistic.
Craig was heavily scrutinized when he was first cast, and over the course of his tenure as Bond. Critics raised their eyebrows at his blond hair, and at his height – neither of which matched the other actors in the franchise nor the descriptions of Bond in Ian Fleming’s novels. In 2021, casting director Debbie McWilliams even told Entertainment Weekly she “felt sorry” for Craig when she first gave him the role, adding: “It was unbelievably negative, I have to say. The press response was awful and I felt so sorry for him, but in a funny kind of a way I think it almost spurred him on to do his damnedest to prove everybody wrong.”
Craig was ultimately praised for his performance as Bond, with critics saying he managed to bring more depth to the character while still sharing the spirit of his predecessors. He also campaigned to reduce the objectification of women in the films. In the meantime, Craig’s non-Bond roles in recent years have been as different as possible from the master spy.
Craig will be back in theaters on Nov. 27 in Queer, an adaptation of William S. Burroughs’ 1985 novella of the same name. Set in Mexico City in the 1940s, it is about an older man named Lee (Craig) becoming infatuated with a younger recently discharged American Navy serviceman, Eugene (Starkey), while both struggle with drug dependency. those that want to revisit Craig’s time as bond can find all five of his movies streaming now on Prime Video.
