“It was unbelievably negative, I have to say,” McWilliams said about the reaction to Craig’s casting. “The press response was awful and I felt so sorry for him, but in a funny kind of a way I think it almost spurred him on to do his damndest to prove everybody wrong. The whole way through the film, stuff would come out about [how] he couldn’t walk and talk, he couldn’t run, he couldn’t drive a car properly, so much stuff which was completely and utterly untrue. And he just kept his head down, got on with the job and then the film came out and everybody went, ‘Oh wow, I think we quite like him after all.’”
McWilliams added that “Craig’s going to be a tough act to follow.” Craig’s debut in “Casino Royale” earned acclaim, and the film was largely credited with reigniting worldwide interest in the Bond franchise. Craig’s tenure with the Bond franchise would include “Skyfall,” widely considered one of the greatest 007 movies ever made. “There was a massive search before he was cast and it had started out as a slightly different slant on things,” McWilliams said of casting Craig. “Originally the story of ‘Casino Royale’ was meant to be a sort of new, young tryout growing into James Bond rather than the fully formed character, but we struggled to find anybody who could fill those shoes…Then as time went by they decided, let’s just stick with the old formula and let’s look at it again. And that was after a long, long search and Daniel became the obvious choice to me in the end.” “No Time to Die,” Craig’s Bond swan song, debuts in theaters October 8. Sign Up: Stay on top of the latest breaking film and TV news! Sign up for our Email Newsletters here.
