The one thing Mads Mikkelsen hated about working with Daniel Craig: “This is wrong”
Daniel Craig was subjected to serious scrutiny when he was cast as James Bond following Pierce Brosnan’s reign. One of the most coveted roles in Hollywood, many fans felt he didn’t fit the strictly adhered to ‘tall, dark and handsome’ archetype—after all, the actor is short and blond; the handsome part is, however, less deniable. But there’s one more thing about him that might have been a step too far for 007 fans if they’d only known at the time. According to Mads Mikkelsen, he’s terrible at poker.
Craig first appeared as Bond in the 2006 adaptation of Ian Fleming’s Casino Royale, with Mikkelsen playing Albanian banker and villain Le Chiffre. In order to stop the latter from investing in the terrorist activities of the Lord’s Resistance Army in Uganda, the MI6 entered Bond into the banker’s Texas Hold ‘em tournament at the Casino Royale in Montenegro. Here, Bond flexes his famous poker skills and wins the tournament with a ridiculous hand despite an assassination and poisoning attempt.
Speaking to GQ, Mikkelsen broke down his experience around the table with his co-stars: “If you’re a poker player, you’d go, ‘What!?’ We just wanted to make the nature of the betting believable, but the hands obviously had to be easily recognisable to an audience that doesn’t play poker, so they were quite crazy hands.” While the film was criticised for this somewhat ridiculous portrayal of the game, the reality must have been much more painful for poker-loving Bond fans.
“Everybody knew how to play poker around that table… except for one. Daniel. He had no clue. He sucked,” Mads lay his cards on the table with much exasperation and gesticulation. Obviously, not every actor can be expected, or needs to be, an expert in the activities of their characters. Isn’t that what acting is all about? However, the irony of Craig’s inability to play the game paired with his mismatched aesthetics isn’t lost on most. Next, they’ll tell us he doesn’t like martinis or women. But then again, maybe Craig is just that good…
Still, for Mikkelsen, it was the worst part of the shoot. While he and Craig spent hours dreaming up sick torture scenes, they couldn’t quite ‘bond’ over poker. Mikkelsen spent much of the table scenes feeling bitter about a lesser player winning the whole hand, saying, “It was the worst thing that he, of all people, had to beat me… it was like, this is wrong!” Clearly, Mads not only got the wrong hand but drew the short straw, too.
While Craig got to play the most suave spy in the world and beat actual good players at poker, Mads got to be the villain with a cloudy, bleeding eye—not quite as sexy. But still, as Mikkelsen points out, Le Chiffre really did get him back with that rope.
