NEW YORK, Oct 10 (US): Lashana Lynch was in stunt training when she found out she was going to play Agent 00 in the James Bond movie No Time to Die.
Lynch had already been cast by director Cary Joji Fukunaga and producers Barbara Broccoli and Michael Wilson. But what she was going to play remained a mystery to her. She was doing her best to prepare for an unspecified role but it seemed to kick in.
“Nothing makes sense,” Lynch said in an interview. “And I’m like, ‘Why are you teaching me this?’ what does that mean?”
Instead, Lynch heard bits and pieces during her flight. It felt, she says, like a TV series carefully revealing each episode. Only when it was in the midst of summer and the shooting of fake rifles came full disclosure. Lynch will be the first black woman to play Agent 00 in six decades of James Bond films, the Associated Press (AP) reported.
Not only that, Lynch’s character, Nomi, takes the code name 007, with Daniel Craig as James Bond all and out of the British Secret Service.
“The audition for a mystery movie and a mystery character turned into a potential Bond movie and a mystery character,” Lynch recalls. “That turned into a definite Bond movie and the possibility of someone going in and creating a really nice storm.”
“No Time to Die,” which opened in US theaters Friday, is Craig’s fifth and final performance as a supernatural spy. But the film, perhaps more than any previous Bond film, draws much of its punch from its women. This includes Léa Seydoux, as Bond’s most enduring romance and a character with a complicated history, and Ana de Armas, in a succinct yet action-packed look.
However, Lynch’s role is a milestone in the franchise. With this date, the spotlight has shined brighter than ever on the 33-year-old British-Jamaican actor, who played a fighter pilot for a single mother in the movie ‘Captain Marvel’. Lynch is widely known for expanding the historically homogeneous Bond universe into a role that—like others who have brought broader representation to decades-old franchises—has also brought online hostility. When news first leaked in 2019 that Lynch would be 007, her Instagram lit up with racist and misogynistic comments.
“I was reminded of the institution I was walking into and the world that doesn’t necessarily support people like me,” Lynch says. “Once I got over that initial reaction, I plunged straight into work. I turned that energy into stunts, into photography, into spending time with family and also re-evaluating how I use my phone. Now I put them in the lockers. I take a two hour break.”
“It’s always something to ask,” she adds of the response. “Young people need to hear that.”
Lynch first came to Broccoli’s attention in Debbie Tucker Green’s “Ear for an Eye,” a royal court play produced by Broccoli. Lynch was part of a largely black band that gave one-on-one testimonies of the prejudice they encountered in their lives.
“It just blew me away,” says Broccoli, who also produced an adaptation of Lynch’s “Ear for Eye,” which premiered October 16 at the London Film Festival. “She is an extraordinary, beautiful, talented actress. She seemed an obvious choice for Nomi, character 00. I think she is a big star.”
Lynch says that before Craig took over as Bond, she had little to do with Bond films. But inviting her to audition, she says, made her feel like she might be entering the franchise in time.
“As a black Londoner, I never had the opportunity to connect with James Bond in a way that made sense,” Lynch says. “Now, Daniel Craig has entered the franchise and made it so rude and dark and dangerous – I doubted his shock for the first time – it really got me interested in how the new characters in the franchise would respond to him.”
In No Time To Die, Bond eventually returns to duty where he is surprised to learn that his trademark number has been taken. What follows between him and Nomi is part rivalry, part partnership. Nomi asserts herself with a proud confidence and moments of uncertainty. Bond adapts to it. For Lynch, she is very proud that my strength of sleep does not accompany weakness either.
“Like a lot of us, she’s always on top. It’s a facade just to be in the world,” Lynch says of my sleep situation. “I want there to be a really natural, realistic and easy impact on our youth in that when we talk about ‘strong black women,’ we don’t assume Only that their strength fell from the sky and landed in their minds.”
RAE