Daniel Craig hints that politics play a role in ‘No Time to Die’: ‘We struggled to keep Trump out of this film’
Thanks to concerns over the coronavirus, James Bond fans will have to wait until November to watch No Time to Die. But Daniel Craig has offered up a few details about the delayed film, which marks his final outing as 007.
In a cover interview for GQ’s April issue, the 52-year-old actor spoke candidly about his Bond journey — from initially thinking “My life is going to get f***ed if I do this” when being approached for the iconic role, to his on-set injuries, to tearing up as he wrapped his final scene. Craig also addressed how the current political climate will inform his Bond storyline, just as the events of 9/11 called for a darker 007 series rather than the wry, cocked-eyebrow hero portrayed by the likes of Pierce Brosnan and Roger Moore.
“We struggled to keep Trump out of this film,” Craig admitted to writer Sam Knight. “But of course it is there. It’s always there, whether it’s Trump, or whether it’s Brexit, or whether it’s Russian influence on elections or whatever.”
He didn’t elaborate on how President Trump might be referenced in the film. Craig, who donated more than $47,000 to Sen. Bernie Sanders in 2015, also spoke out about his opposition to Brexit.
“There are British people working in the top industries in the world and at the top of those industries,” the star, who currently lives in New York with wife Rachel Weisz. “We do that, and we are good at that. And somehow we’re kind of breaking all that apart. Whether that’s breaking from Europe ... There is a sort of nihilism, isn’t there?”
He went on to compare Bond — a workhorse of sorts for the British public, albeit a glamorous and not altogether anonymous one — to what the GQ article described as the “grandstanding” of Trump and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson.
“There’s something I feel that Bond represents, someone who’s there, trying to do the job and doesn’t want any f***ing publicity,” he told Knight. “And this is a joke, because he drives a f***ing Aston Martin and does all these ridiculous things. But these people exist ... It’s the ambulance service. I know it’s terribly kind of romantic. But they are people who are just getting on with it and saving people’s lives.
“But that’s not the way the world works now,” Craig added. “It’s about humiliating others to save one’s own skin. And it’s cowardly, it’s just f***ing cowardly.”
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