BOND FAREWELL
“IT’S ALL OVER”
Daniel Craig is sitting across from Total Film in a New York hotel, but his mind has wandered to 2015. When the credits rolled on the 24th Bond film, Spectre, Craig watched as the traditional sign-off ‘JAMES BOND WILL RETURN’ triumphantly flashed on the screen. But the then 47-year-old Craig had no intention of making a comeback. “I thought I probably was physically not capable of doing another,” says Craig who, on top of a punishing six-month shoot, tore the meniscus in his knee during filming. “For me, it was very cut and dried that I wasn’t coming back.”
“He was so exhausted after that film,” recalls Barbara Broccoli, daughter of Albert R. “Cubby” Broccoli who, alongside her half-brother Michael G. Wilson, runs Eon Productions, and has produced every Bond film since 1995’s GoldenEye. “We’d had our own trials and tribulations on Spectre, and [Daniel] had a massive injury. It was very difficult. So he just needed some time.”
‘WE STARTED TALKING AND I WENT, “THERE MIGHT BE A STORY WE NEED TO FINISH HERE…”’
DANIEL CRAIG
Broccoli and Wilson waited. Almost two years, in fact, before approaching Craig about returning for one final mission. A break was exactly what the doctor ordered. “I went and did other things. I got some separation. My family forgave me for being away from home for that length of time,” Craig smiles, clearly in high spirits as he embarks on his final Bond press tour. “We started talking about it and I went, ‘There might be a story we need to finish here – something we started in Casino [Royale]. Something to do with Vesper, and Spectre, and something that was connected, in a way.’ It started to formulate. And I thought, ‘Here we go.’”
Two and a half years after Craig’s welcome epiphany, and with just nine days of filming left to go, is standing in the vast Richard Attenborough soundstage at Pinewood. To our left, second unit is shooting close-ups of a parked Aston Martin DB5 for use as inserts during the film’s Matera chase sequence. To the right, production has constructed a Jamaican nightclub bathed in dirty blue light and packed with clubbers dancing to music that drops to near-silence whenever the cameras roll. In real life and on film, it’s five years since Bond drove off into the sunset with Madeleine Swann, and a very much retired, very much single
