Defying the critics, Daniel Craig is easing into his role as 007, he tells Martyn Palmer on the set of Casino Royale
The long, gruelling days of filming and even some of the stunts are getting easier for Daniel Craig, although you couldn’t possibly tell by looking at him. On set for Casino Royale he’s battered and bruised, in a grime-caked vest which looks, frankly, at least one size too small for his impressively honed torso.
If he’s been flexing those newly acquired muscles fighting bad guys — and that, after all, is his day job as the new James Bond — they obviously gave at least as good as he did.
“Yeah, that’s about the size of it,” he grins. “But the day’s not over yet . . .” Indeed it isn’t, and even if this dishevelled image is a far cry from the smooth, sophisticated Bond of the past, all that Craig asks is that we give him the chance to prove the cynics wrong, to let him have his day.
Ever since it was announced, a little more than a year ago, that as the sixth 007 he would be following in the footprints of Pierce Brosnan, Craig has attracted a firestorm of internet criticism ranging from mean-spirited (on the now defunct website craignotbond.com) to the downright silly (too blond to be Bond).
Add a sceptical tabloid press into the mix and it’s a wonder that Craig, 38, turned up to film Casino Royale at all, especially as he had agonised about taking the role in the first place.
“I’d be lying to you if I said I ignored it all,” he says. “And it’s that horrible thing with the internet, it’s like the drug we’ve got in the front room. I mean, we might use it for sensible things some of the time, but there’s always an hour in our lives where we just end up looking at s***.”
Given all the above, it wouldn’t be surprising to find a bit of a siege mentality on the set here today. There isn’t, but mention redtop stories that Craig lost two front teeth when a stunt went wrong — not true, he had a filling loosened — or that he couldn’t drive the manual Aston Martin DBS, and he rolls those piercingly pale blue eyes in mock horror. “Oh, do me a favour,” he groans.
“It’s playground stuff. It really is ‘Na, na, na! You did this!’ And it’s like ‘F*** off, I’ve got more important things to think about.’ I was certainly expecting a bit of a backlash, but I wasn’t expecting the way it came. But it did, and that’s it.
“And I’ve got two choices. I can either buckle under it or knuckle down, and, hopefully, the latter has happened. I just went ‘OK, let’s get on with it.’ And at the end of the day I’ve given 100 per cent on this, I’ve given everything I could. And I’ll present it and if people don’t like it, stuff ’em. I’m not being rude, I’m just saying that I’ve given it my best shot.”
Craig is in the middle of a private airfield, Dunsfold Park, in Surrey. He’s fresh from the make-up chair, which explains his impressively beaten-up appearance.
In an hour or so he’ll be called on set by the director, Martin Campbell, who is setting up a complex shot involving terrorists storming a jet that has been flown in for the sequence. As you do — if you’re making a Bond film, anyway. “Amazing, eh,” says Craig, clearly awestruck by the scale of a production costing a reported $72 million. “We’ve got our own f****** jet-liner!” The white Boeing 747 has no markings on it and will later be transformed by CGI into the Airbus required by the script. We are supposed to be airside at a bustling Miami International Airport instead of surrounded by prime Surrey real estate and some rather pretty trees and fields.
“Yes, rather surprisingly they wouldn’t let us film on a runway in Miami,” jokes Craig. “F****** killjoys!” If he’s rougher round the edges than his smooth-talking predecessor Brosnan, surely that’s the point.
“Daniel is not the traditional handsome type,” says Campbell later. “He is good-looking, but he’s more unconventional, tougher and darker. This Bond had to be darker and Daniel can convey that, rather like Sean Connery. Connery had that presence on the screen of someone who could definitely take care of himself. Daniel has that, too.”
Just over two years ago, the producers Barbara Broccoli and Michael Wilson, keepers of the Bond cinematic flame, decided that the longest running franchise in Western cinema needed an overhaul.
It was a bold decision in many ways, not least considering that the last of Brosnan’s four films as Bond, Die Another Day, took $456 million at the box office, more than any other 007 movie; hardly a flop by any standards.
