Daniel Craig Recalls “Train Wreck” Event Announcing His James Bond Casting

Few characters in the history of cinema are as beloved as James Bond, with the reveal of an actor who is set to be taking on the role coming with much excitement and anticipation, though the most recent Bond, Daniel Craig, recently looked back at how underwhelming the official announcement of the casting was in retrospect. Understandably, the event was meant to deliver much fanfare to honor the character’s history, but with Craig being unaware of how to handle all of the publicity surrounding such a role, he felt as though he could have handled the situation in a slightly different way.

“Once the announcement was made and we did that incredibly successful press conference,” Craig joked with the Awards Chatter podcast. “I’ve watched bits of it. It’s a f-cking train wreck. In some ways, I regret the way that press conference went; in other ways, I’m very happy the way that press conference went.”

He added, “I didn’t know how to turn on the charm, which was to be charming and be artful about it, ‘Oh, that’s a lovely question, how nice of you to ask that.’ I was just, ‘F-ck you! You, f-ck you as well!’ That’s all I wanted to say.”

Craig followed up his Bond debut in Casino Royale with four more films, the final of which was last year’s No Time to Die. That film saw audiences seemingly saying goodbye to James Bond, an idea Craig had since those early says of signing on for the series. 

“I’m going to tell a story here, whether or not anybody remembers it or agrees with it. But it was 2006,” Craig recalled to Variety last month. “[Producer] Barbara [Broccoli] and I were sitting in the back of a car driving away from the Berlin premiere of Casino Royale. Everything was going well. People liked the movie. And it looked like I was gonna get a chance to make at least another movie. I said to Barbara, ‘How many of these movies do I have to make?’ Because I don’t really look at contracts or any of those things. And she said, ‘Four,’ and I went, ‘Oh, okay. Can I kill him off in the last one?’ And she didn’t pause. She said, ‘Yes.’ So I struck a deal with her back then and said, ‘That’s the way I’d like it to go.’ It’s the only way I could see for myself to end it all and to make it like that was my tenure, someone else could come and take over. She stuck to her guns.”

He added, “When he goes, he can’t come back was really what it boils down to.”

Stay tuned for details on the future of the James Bond franchise.

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