As the competition for casting the next James Bond heats up, one star from the most recent incarnation of the franchise has shared his insight on what the upcoming reboot should look like.
Ben Whishaw, who played Q in three James Bond films — Skyfall (2012), Spectre (2015), and No Time to Die (2021) — alongside Daniel Craig, believes the 007 series “needs to be reinvented completely” when Craig’s role is recast.
Speaking in an interview with The Sunday Times, Whishaw spoke about how his version of the character, like the actor himself, was gay — but found the depiction of Q’s sexuality on screen “unsatisfying.”
In No Time to Die, Q briefly mentions an upcoming dinner date with an off-screen male character, a storyline that goes no further, to Whishaw’s disappointment.
“I rarely think about Bond,” the Paddington voice actor said in the interview. “That would be weird.” It was also confirmed in the article by The Times that Whishaw would not reprise his role as Q.
When asked about the current hunt for the new Bond — said to be between Josh O’Connor, Jack Lowden, Callum Turner, and an unnamed fourth actor — Whishaw expressed amusement at the public interest in the casting, stating “people go crazy about it.”
“It’s all deliberate hype. When you are working on it it’s incredibly secretive, almost like being a spy — you only get the pages of the script that you are in,” he continued. “It’s a ploy to create suspense and glamour, but it’s kind of fun.”
When asked about any guidance for the cast and crew of the eventual 26th official James Bond film, Whishaw responded, “The world has changed so much since the last Bond film so you have to find what is relevant about it. I think it needs to be reinvented completely. But it’s not for me to say.”
