Dame Judi Dench, who portrayed 007’s boss M in eight James Bond films over 20 years, claims that Daniel Craig was responsible for having her character die in 2012’s Skyfall.
Variety published an excerpt from Dench’s new memoir, Is It Too Late to Make a Run For It?, wherein the Oscar winner recalled how she found out that M was going to be killed off.
“I was taken to the Wolseley restaurant by Barbara, Michael and Sam [Mendes, the director] – I don’t think Daniel Craig was there – and they outlined the plot and told me they were going to bump me off. My own fault, I suppose,” Dench said, in a somewhat tongue-in-cheek manner. “Ever since GoldenEye, when the entire film unit went off to Monte Carlo and St. Petersburg and I only had three days in Watford, I’d been begging them to let me out from behind my desk. Well, they did finally let me out from behind my desk … and they shot me.”
Dench – who first played the role in 1995’s GoldenEye opposite Pierce Brosnan in his debut as James Bond – then named who decided it was time for her M to finally get the ax. (Dench’s M did make a posthumous cameo in Spectre.)
“Apparently, it was Daniel’s idea to have me killed. But first I had to suffer the indignity of being sacked by Ralph Fiennes. Arsehole [laughs],” Dench said.
Dench also revealed that 1997’s Tomorrow Never Dies was the most difficult Bond film to make, citing “a general air of chaos” that consumed the production.
“Making a film is nerve-racking enough – at least it is for me – and to be presented with a load of rewrites last minute is very destabilizing: there are whole new chunks of information to take in – not to mention new lines to learn – that you haven’t had the time to examine,” Dench said.
“Every day we’d be presented with new scenes. On one occasion I arrived home at 10 o’clock at night only to be greeted by a motorcycle courier with a dozen new pages to be learnt before my pick-up at 5am the following morning. I mean, when the hell would I have a chance to learn all that? It’s not unusual to have rewrites on a film, but the script for Tomorrow Never Dies seemed to be in a permanent state of flux.”
In related news, new Bond studio Amazon MGM Studios’ search for the next actor to play James Bond is coming down to the wire, with Callum Turner, Jack Lowden, and Josh O’Connor reportedly the frontrunners to succeed Daniel Craig.
Jim Vejvoda (he/him) is IGN’s Assoc. Director of Entertainment Content.
