No Time To Die Star Lashana Lynch Talks Shaping 007 With Phoebe Waller-Bridge

No Time To Die is now playing in theaters everywhere, and it features Captain Marvel star Lashana Lynch taking up the 007 mantle alongside Daniel Craig’s James Bond. Previously, Lynch spoke with ComicBook.com about her biggest goals when creating the character. During another recent chat with IndieWire, Lynch talked more about shaping Nomi and how things really came together once she met with co-writer Phoebe Waller-Bridge. 

“The last meeting that I had with [producer] Barbara Broccoli, [director] Cary Fukunaga, and Daniel Craig was one of many questions,” Lynch explained. “Because, [in] the last two meetings, I had read sides from other Bond films, and I didn’t know what the hell was going on. I didn’t know who she was going to be, what her name was, what she was representing, I didn’t know anything. I just knew I was auditioning for a Bond movie.” She recalled asking them pointedly, “Why does she have to be a match for Bond?”

When it was announced they were bringing in Waller-Bridge to help with the script, Lynch thought, “Great, female writer, tick, the writer of ‘Fleabag,’ sure. I’m sold. Don’t worry about it. I’m in.” She recalled of their first meeting, “I was like, ‘This is where I want her to be, and she’s got so much potential and I think she should be kind of awkward, but really realistic, and I want young people to be relating to her in the way that I haven’t had the opportunity to do before, and what do you think?’ … And she just said, ‘Yep, yep. That’s where I’m at too. I agree. I think we should write that. I think she should be all of those things and more.’ And I thought, ‘Wow, thank you. Thank you for hearing me finally, thank you for being a woman writer who is in the position to hear me fully.’”

Lynch goes on to explain that they wanted “awkwardness, nervousness, and anxiety” as part of her character’s makeup in order to “create someone that was very much an opposite to Bond in that she’s figuring every moment out as it happens.”

“We are very intelligent women,” Lynch said. “We know what we are talking about a lot of the time, but then there’s sometimes when we just have to figure it out on the spot and make it look as seamless as possible. I don’t often see that in action movies. So when we discussed what anxiety means and what an agent with anxiety can be, it made me think, ‘Gosh, there must be moments when she’s about to like, shoot someone down and she thinks, “I’m really nervous to do this because I haven’t done it before.”‘ What does that look like? What does that feel like? And how do we display that in a way that still keeps her within her power, but also allows us women to watch her and say, ‘Thank God it’s not just me.’”

No Time To Die is now playing in theaters.