The James Bond villain who hated their role: “I went through a lot of goddamn emotional hell”
Any actor chosen to play the title role will always be destined to spend the remainder of their career dining out on the residual fame of James Bond, whether it’s for better or worse.
Daniel Craig grew sick of being constantly asked about 007 as soon as No Time to Die was released, whereas George Lazenby didn’t mind because it was the only notable thing he accomplished. Sean Connery grew to hate the role before eventually embracing it, while Pierce Brosnan and Timothy Dalton continued fielding questions about MI6’s finest decades after they hung up the tux.
Of course, embodying one of the most famous fictional characters in pop culture will have that sort of effect, but things have been a lot patchier on the villainous side of the fence. Bond has battled against some iconic adversaries, although there are just as many who quickly fade from memory once the credits start rolling.
For every Blofeld, Oddjob, and Jaws, Dominic Greene, Gustav Graves, and Aristotle Kristatos are sitting on the other side of the fence. 1973’s Live and Let Die isn’t an entry from the Bond back catalogue that holds up particularly well when viewed through a modern lens, but that was just one of Yaphet Kotto’s many issues with playing Dr Kananga, which began during shooting and continued long after the film’s release.
Being inflated like a balloon and exploding did at least give him one of the most preposterous death scenes in 007 history, which didn’t matter much to the actor when the dialogue and characterisation he was given to work with left a lot to be desired. Kotto admitted that he “had to dig deep in my soul and brain and come up with a level of reality that would offset the sea of stereotype crap that Tom Mankiewicz wrote,” which included the cartoonish demise he described as a “joke.”
Beyond that, Kotto would reveal that he was instructed not to partake in promoting Live and Let Die, which soured his experience even further. “They were afraid the public would react negatively to a Black villain, so they didn’t play my character up,” he told The Big Issue. “That hurt me a lot, man. I went through a lot of goddamn emotional hell because they were afraid people would be angry that a Black guy was not being Sidney Poitier. I was the opposite of everything he created.”
Kotto hated the script, he hated the way his character was killed, he hated being downplayed in the marketing, and he hated playing a villain that skirted the line between caricature and offensive. Did he at least get on with Moore during production? Seeing as he said, “I have nothing to say about Roger Moore” when asked, that would also be a no.
