The closest Benedict Cumberbatch ever got to playing James Bond: “It didn’t go well”
Is anyone else a little exhausted with the James Bond discourse?
Maybe it was Daniel Craig’s two-decade run at Britain’s favourite spy or the lengthy wait for his successor, thanks to the bureaucracy of the movie rights. Either way, something about this lull between Bonds has felt as tiresome as any other, with names supposedly nailed onto the position just to step forward and rule it out.
When Aaron Taylor-Johnson was all but confirmed, I looked forward to what darkness he could potentially bring to the role. Then, when it was Tom Holland, I wondered what a younger Bond would look like. Then Callum Turner swooped in, and I embraced tradition. Now, I simply couldn’t care. The saga has rumbled on too long.
Obviously, speculation has always been a part of the Bond story. While it’s felt exhausting this time around, it’s not an entirely new concept that the discourse feels inflated with drama when it needn’t be. Craig’s hiring was wildly controversial at the time, largely because of his sandy hair and the fact that the Broccoli family decided to choose him over a string of potential suitors.
Henry Cavill, Rupert Friend and Sam Worthington were all in the mix, beating a generation of actors that included Christian Bale and Benedict Cumberbatch. A truly glorious era, spoiled with great choices.
But while he may have been a worthy candidate to many of us, the fact is, Cumberbatch ruined any chance he had of playing Bond, long before they had even started. At one point in his career, he had bagged himself an audition to play a part in the video game, a feasible entry point to the bigger cinema job you would anticipate.
Eager to stand out from a crowd of Bond lookalikes, Cumberbatch took extreme measures that, simply put, ruined any chance he had at getting the main role. “When I got to the audition, there were men in their 40s in full dinner jackets,” he explained.
“So I go in, in casual wear and I thought, ‘I’ll shake it up’, thinking there’ll be lots of movement and action because it’s a Bond character. So I started to throw myself around the room and over sofas and doing lots of Walther PPK poses… and that’s not a euphemism.”
Benedict added, smiling: “And I didn’t get a call, I’m still waiting. It didn’t go well”.
In fairness to Cumberbatch, that’s the sort of physicality demanded of a video game. But maybe he bought into the fantasy element too much and ruled himself out of any future real-life Bond role.
But clearly, there’s no real knowing what casting directors want from a Bond anymore. Do they want realism, tradition or youthful zeal? Part of me thinks they wanted something that exists across all three camps and are waiting for the perfect suitor. But Cumberbatch made it clear that he isn’t that person; instead, he belongs in the world of a superhero whose name is more aptly titled for him: Dr Strange.
