James Bond will always be a white-first, penis-forward franchise, according to the woman who cast the last 14 movies. Despite some criticism that the face of England’s declining empire should be more inclusive toward those living in its crumbling nation, Debbie McWilliams, the casting director who’s been doling out 007 assignments for the last four decades, says the character won’t be recast as a non-white, non-cisgender man. “No, I don’t think so,” McWilliams said during a talk at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival, per The Hollywood Reporter. “Ian Fleming wrote a character, and that’s the character that stays.”
McWilliams began working on the Bond films during the Roger Moore era, casting Bonds from Dalton through Craig. During that time, contrary to McWilliams’ claim that Fleming’s character is the one “that stays,” Bond has been modernized in recent decades. Perhaps due to the ravages jaundice would surely have on Bond’s ivory white skin, gone is the three-pack-a-day smoker, who enjoys the “Balkan mixture with a high nicotine content” and a “daily consumption of alcohol in the region of half a bottle of spirits of between sixty and seventy proof,” that Fleming describes in Thunderball. He’s also less prone to commenting on how young, girlish, and innocent the women he pursues are, but we digress.
While McWilliams doesn’t have an opinion of which U.K.-based white boy du jour will hold the PPK next (“I neither know, and I have no opinion”), she promises that his license to kill isn’t going away. “You’ve got to think that he could pick a gun up and shoot you,” she says. She also maintains that “there’s not a set rule” as long as Bond is a caucasian with a phallus. “It’s whoever fits the bill, and frankly, it will be different for different directors and different producers—and it’s about to change dramatically.” But not too dramatically. Like most people who look like they can pick up a gun and shoot you, Bond will always be white and male.
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