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Eva Green, who brought Vesper Lynd to life in Casino Royale, failed her first screen test as the character responsible for melting 007’s heart. Based on the classic Ian Fleming novel of the same name, 2006’s Casino Royale served as Daniel Craig’s inaugural outing as the British MI6 agent James Bond. Showered with positive reviews upon its opening, the film boldly reinvented the long-running franchise with a much more grounded approach that would go on to inform each of Craig’s subsequent outings.
According to long-term Bond casting director Debbie McWilliams, however, the decision to cast Green as Bond’s new love interest did not come without its own difficulties. During an interview with RadioTimes.com, McWilliams reveals there was not only resistance to her initial selection, but she also failed her first screen test. Thankfully, however, both McWilliams and Bond producer Barbara Broccoli insisted she come back for a second test, which ultimately landed her the role. Check out her comments below:
Eva [Green] had always been on the list, but there had been a certain resistance to her – I don’t really know why, but I think they felt that maybe she didn’t have enough experience. She’d only done a few films and they’d all been very underground, low-budget type of things, but working with someone like Barbara [Broccoli, producer on the Bond series], who has just such a fantastic instinct, we both really, really liked her.
I’m sure she would be the first to admit she was terrible. Nobody had put her in hair and make-up and all the rest of it, so it didn’t do her any justice whatsoever, and rather terrifyingly we started shooting Casino Royale without having cast that part. In fact, we hadn’t cast Le Chiffre [eventually played by Mads Mikkelsen] either…
But both Barbara and I insisted that Eva came back and had another go – this time, she was in hair and make-up, and she was in wardrobe, and she felt much calmer about the whole thing, and so that’s what sealed it.
How Eva Green’s Vesper Lynd Changed The Bond Franchise
Following Pierce Brosnan’s tenure, which began in the mid-1990s, Craig’s debut as James Bond marked a significant change in direction for the long-running franchise. Intentionally upending various tropes and expectations that had evolved since 1962’s Dr. No, Casino Royale dispensed with the camp atmosphere and reliance on increasingly unrealistic gadgetry in favor of a far more serious take on Fleming’s famous spy. Yet, in-between Craig’s solemn characterization and parkour-inspired chase sequences, it was actually Green’s character that proved the film’s most significant departure point.
Over the years the role of a “Bond Girl” had often been laden with baggage, with the franchise’s women often depicted as one-dimensional characters developed purely to become an object of desire for the Bond of the day. Treated more as accessories rather than people, the Bond franchise’s misogynistic legacy was perhaps the biggest challenge for the Craig era to overcome. Green’s Vesper Lynd, however, was a far more detailed character whose impact on Bond would persist long after her own death.
Neither a femme fatale nor a damsel in distress, Green’s turn as Vesper Lynd was as nuanced and developed as Bond himself. While the events of Casino Royale would ultimately see Lynd sacrifice herself for Bond, her legacy as the woman for whom he was willing to give up his 00 status continued to haunt him right up until his own demise in No Time To Die. Without the groundwork laid by Green, later franchise characters such as Lashana Lynch’s Nomi, Ana de Armas’s Paloma, and Léa Seydoux’s Madeleine Swann would never have come to pass.
Source: RadioTimes.com
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