Former Bond casting director says Jacob Elordi and Callum Turner should not play 007 super spy

Debbie McWilliams no longer has any decision powers over who will play the next James Bond but she did for decades.

The now retired casting director was at the helm when Timothy Dalton, Pierce Brosnan and Daniel Craig were called to service as Britain’s most famous cultural export.

So, she knows a thing or two about what it takes to embody 007, and she doesn’t think any of the most speculated names should be picking up that Walther PPK.

McWilliams emphatically told The Independent that the next Bond should not be Jacob Elordi, Callum Turner or Harris Dickinson, three of the favoured candidates among the internet set.

For one thing, they’re all too famous.

“It is absolutely essential that (Bond) retains a total enigma. I don’t want to see any of them as Bond because we now know so much about them,” McWilliams said.

“We want to know as little about them personally as possible, because that’s what spies are. We don’t need to know where he goes shopping or who is parents are, or where he lives. We never want to see him at home.”

Elordi has broken out in a big way after commercial successes in Saltburn, Wuthering Heights, buzzy TV show Euphoria, and an Oscar nomination for Frankenstein.

Turner is lesser-known professionally, having appeared mostly in mid-budget movies such as Emma, Eternity and The Boys in the Boat, as well as a supporting role in the Harry Potter spin-off film series Fantastic Beasts.

But Turner has been all over social media and in entertainment news in recent weeks for his high-profile wedding celebrations to popstar Dua Lipa.

Elordi too has had a string of notable off-screen entanglements that has kept him in the headlines, most recently with one of the most famous women on the internet, Kendall Jenner.

And having just done a big promo tour with Wuthering Heights along with the awards circuit, in his mother became a regular fixture, you can’t say the internet isn’t familiar with many aspects of Elordi’s life.

Dickinson, however, is arguably not a household name. He has been in a string of critical hits but most of them including Triangle of Sadness and Scrapper, were indie and cinephile faves rather than blockbusters. His most zeitgeisty movie would be Babygirl with Nicole Kidman, which had a moment online 18 months ago.

Dickinson has also kept a lowkey personal life, and his civil ceremony wedding in May to long-term partner singer-songwriter Rose Gray was not a tabloid circus.

If relative anonymity is a key criteria, working against Dickinson, though, is that he is set to play one of the most iconic figures in British cultural history, John Lennon, in Danny Boyle’s four-part The Beatles film series, which will be released in 2028.

If the Bond producers were looking for a fresh face, Dickinson might be that now, but soon he won’t be.

McWilliams added, “And a vital element of the whole thing is his job description. He’s licensed to kill, and we have to believe he can do that. If you don’t, then you’ve lost the audience.

“Timothy and Pierce weren’t particularly well known. Daniel had had a career in independent films and a fairly colourful romantic life beforehand, but he wasn’t a household name, and that helps enormously. I want to see somebody who is completely out of the blue.”

Renowned and experienced casting director Nina Gold (The Crown, Hamnet, Conclave) has been charged with finding the next super spy, but her challenges are different to those of McWilliam’s.

Even when Craig was cast two decades ago, let alone the earlier iterations, online celebrity culture was a very different beast. While the UK tabloids were already aggressive at the time, social media has really shifted the fame game.

It’s much harder to stay anonymous in an algorithm-led online space that is fed by trends.

Gold also has different masters, with Amazon MGM not in creative control of the Bond franchise after decades under Eon Productions.

Amazon MGM may not want to follow the traditional template of who Bond should be, and given how much they paid, directly or indirectly, for the films through its $US8 billion acquisition of MGM as well as additional fees paid to Eon’s Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson to take over Bond, they might want a well-known name to maximise ticket sales.

Ultimately, it comes down to whether Amazon MGM believes Bond is a big enough brand without the add-on of, for example, Elordi stardom.

Historically, no matter who played the character, Bond is the icon which endures.

The upcoming film is being directed by French-Canadian filmmaker Denis Villeneuve, written by Englishman Steven Knight and produced by David Heyman, who’s British, and Amy Pascal, who is American.