We still don’t know who will play the next James Bond after Daniel Craig handed in his license to kill and retired from MI6. However, there is no shortage of either rumours or wishful thinking.
In some circles, people have been wishing for a different Bond this time around, with some hoping for either a colored actor or even a woman. Now, former Bond girl Gemma Arterton – who played the British agent’s love interest Strawberry Fields in Quantum of Solace – has weighed in on the matter in an interview with The Times (via The Hollywood Reporter), and she’s not at all sold on the idea.
Instead, Arterton says that “Isn’t a female James Bond like Mary Poppins being played by a man?”, adding: “Sometimes you just have to respect the tradition”.
In this she joins Daniel Craig who the other year told the Radio Times:
“The answer to that is very simple. There should simply be better parts for women and actors of color. Why should a woman play James Bond when there should be a part just as good as James Bond, but for a woman?”
There are many indications that those hoping for a female Bond will ultimately be disappointed, because even the longtime producer of the James Bond series, Barbara Broccoli, said this to Variety when the search for a new James Bond actor began:
“He can be of any color, but he is male. I believe we should be creating new characters for women–strong female characters. I’m not particularly interested in taking a male character and having a woman play it. I think women are far more interesting than that.”
What do you think, is Gemma Arterton right, should the tradition be respected and a female Bond would be the same as a male Mary Poppins, or is it time for a new approach?