After more than a decade of playing James Bond, Daniel Craig revealed which of his international spy films was a “f—ing nightmare” to make.
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During his recent appearance on the Hollywood Reporter’s Award Chatter podcast, Daniel Craig declared that he struggled while making his second James Bond film, 2008’s Quantum of Solace.
“F—ing nightmare,” he declared about the film’s production. He noted that the key issue causing on-set struggles was the 2007-2008 Writers Guild of America strike.
“Paul Haggis did a pass on the script,” Daniel Craig recalled. “Then, he went off and joined the picket line and we didn’t have writers. So, we didn’t have a script. We should never probably have started production, but we did.”
Craig pointed out, “I ended up writing a lot of that film, which I probably shouldn’t say. I do not want the credit. It’s fine.”
Olga Kurylenko, Mathieu Amalric, Giancarlo Giannini, Gemma Arterton, Jeffrey Wright, and Judi Dench also starred alongside Daniel Craig in the James Bond film. Although it made nearly $600 million during its time at the box office, critics called out Quantum of Solace, calling it Craig’s worst Bond movie.
“But it came out,” Daniel Craig continued. “There are some amazing stunt sequences in it. I’m still wearing the pins to prove it. In that sense, there’s a lot of great stuff in it, but it just didn’t quite work. The storytelling wasn’t there. That’s the abject lesson. Going to start a movie without a script is not a good idea.”
Daniel Craig starred in five James Bond films from 2006 to 2021. In 2019, he announced he was stepping down from playing the iconic role. His character’s official death was featured in No Time to Die.
Daniel Craig Previously Opened Up About His Biggest Reservations for Playing James Bond
Daniel Craig spoke out about his biggest reservations about taking on the role of James Bond during an interview with The New Yorker.
“I would say one of my biggest reservations about playing [Bond] would be the construct of masculinity,” Craig explained. “It was often very laughable, but you can’t mock it and expect it to work. You have to buy into it.”
He then shared, “I mean, the vulnerability of human beings is always very interesting to me. We’re all vulnerable. It doesn’t matter who you are. It doesn’t matter how tough you are, everybody’s vulnerable. But it’s how boys are brought up, how men are expected to behave.”
Daniel Craig also declared that he has evolved into a “different person” since his first James Bond film.
“Listen, [Bond] is nearly 20 years of my life,” Craig pointed out. “When I took it on, I was one person. I’m now completely a different person. I’m not doing this movie [‘Queer’] in response to that.”
He declared, “I’m not that small.”
Craig added that he couldn’t have taken on his new film Queer while he was part of the James Bond franchise. “It would’ve felt kind of, ‘Why? What are you trying to prove?’”