During a press conference at the Venice Film Festival for their new film Queer, director Luca Guadagnino and actor Daniel Craig were asked if there could ever be a gay James Bond onscreen.
During the Tuesday presser, as the panel spoke about Guadagnino’s film, one reporter brought up James Bond. With actor Daniel Craig — who was the most recent Bond — and Guadagnino directing Craig in his gay-themed movie both sitting there on the panel, a reporter wondered if the two themes could be mixed and if there might be a gay Bond in the future, The Hollywood Reporter wrote.
Guadagnino, of course, has nothing whatever to do with the James Bond franchise, and his reply to the question was suitably cagy.
“Guys, let’s be adults in the room for a second,” the director said. “There is no way around the fact that nobody would ever know what James Bond desires, period. The important thing is that he does his missions properly.”
However, it appeared that Craig was open to such an idea. While he did not reply to the question, he did applaud for Guadagnino as he tried to answer the question.
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Still, Craig has spoken about revamping James Bond before. Back in 2019 he even insisted that it would not be a bad idea to have a female James Bond.
The most recent Bond is not the only Bond actor to endorse odd interpretations of the character. In 2015, former Bond star Pierce Brosnan insisted that he feels a gay James Bond would be great. He also endorsed a race-swapped Bond.
Guadagnino’s film, Queer, follows Craig in the title role as William Lee, an ex-pat American wanted on drug charges in New Orleans who is living in Mexico to indulge his addiction to drugs, alcohol, and repeated affairs with young men. Then he meets gay lover Eugene Allerton (Drew Starkey) and the pair engage in a graphic gay romance during a road trip.
When Craig was asked about filming the graphic gay sex scenes, he noted that there is nothing “intimate” about filming a sex scene.
“There’s nothing intimate about filming a sex scene on a movie set,” Craig exclaimed, according to Associated Press. “There’s a room full of people watching you. We just wanted to make it as touching and as real and as natural as we possibly could.”
Craig’s co-star, Drew Starkey, also chimed in.
“When you’re rolling around on the floor with someone on the second day of knowing each other, I think that’s a good way to get to know someone,” he said.
This is not the first time that Daniel Craig has hit the screen as a gay character. He portrayed gay private detective Benoit Blanc in two films for the Knives Out franchise in 2019 and 2022. A third is planned for release in 2025.
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