The Bond girl Barbara Broccoli regretted killing: “Straight-laced but with a real naughty edge”
For the first four decades of the James Bond franchise’s existence, being a Bond girl was a rather thankless task that didn’t leave much room to make a mark on the long-running spy saga’s illustrious history.
Actors were hired, regularly given silly names, and then promptly killed off to further the plot and enhance the title hero’s inner conflict, and if they didn’t end up being murdered, then there was a distinctly high chance they’d double-cross or betray him. It was standard practice until the Daniel Craig era began, although it did revert to type on one occasion.
The entirety of Craig’s five-film stint as the legendary secret agent has the shadow of Eva Green’s Vesper Lynd looming over it, while Léa Seydoux’s Madeleine Swann is pivotal as both the daughter of secondary antagonist Mr. White and the mother of Bond’s child, which is the catalyst that spurs him on to make the ultimate sacrifice and end 007’s life on-screen for the very first time ever.
It was clear from the beginning that Craig’s stretch as the sharp-suited spy wasn’t going to lean as heavily into the standard tropes, trappings, girls, and gadgets as his predecessors did, with the notable exception of Gemma Arterton’s consular employee and undercover MI6 operative Strawberry Fields in Quantum of Solace.
She’s got a name ripped straight from the Pussy Galore, Holly Goodhead, Xenia Onataopp, and Christmas Jones school of nomenclature, and her demise is a direct call-back to Goldfinger. She’s discovered dead, naked, and slathered in a lethal coating of crude oil, a calling card from Mathieu Amalric’s nefarious Dominic Greene. Arterton was a rising star at the time, and while the Bond series had never been famous for its well-rounded, complex, and nuanced female characters pre-Craig, she wanted to channel the classic spirit of spycraft with a modern edge.
“We wanted to make her really retro and a bit of a throwback. It’s typically Fleming and a little bit tongue in cheek,” she told MI6 Confidential. “She wore a typical raincoat and yet in one scene she didn’t have anything on underneath. We tried to make her straight laced but with a real naughty edge to her.” Summing up what she hoped to bring to the part, the star would even describe Fields as “the thinking man’s crumpet.”
Not that it did a thing to prevent her from joining the ever-expanding list of one-and-done Bond girls, but producer Barbara Broccoli was at least tinged with regret at smothering Arterton in a valuable natural resource and instigating her doom.
Long after Quantum of Solace was rushed into cinemas, the actor shared how when she bumped into the Eon Productions co-chief, Broccoli said, “I wish we hadn’t killed you off.” She did, though, so despite Arterton’s assertions that “it would have been so good to come back,” she ended up as yet another ill-fated conquest of 007.
