The topic of who the next James Bond should be has been a heated discussion for several years now.
A number of vocal Bond fans have begged for whoever follows Daniel Craig’s version to be anything other than the cis, white, straight secret agent that has always held the title of 007. (And, in turn, mama’s basement-dwelling sons have insisted that “SJWs” not “ruin” another one of their Wonder Bread macho fantasy heroes...but we don’t really care what they think anyway.)
Idris Elba’s been suggested, as has Gillian Anderson, and even Rihanna (yes please). There are a myriad of wonderful options that would breathe new life into a much-loved franchise, but actor Dominic West has a suggestion of his own.
“Maybe a transgender Bond would be cool,” West said in an interview with the UK’s Sunday Times.
West recently worked on the film Colette, in which a transgender actor, Jake Graf, played a cis man.
“There’s a very cool woman who’s the wife of an actor in Colette who is a captain in the electrical engineers, the highest-ranking transgender soldier in the army,” West said of Graf’s wife, Hannah Winterbourne. “She’s a beautiful blonde girl who could be Bond, yes. That’s actually a brilliant idea. They should have a transgender Bond because there are a lot of transgender people in the army. They’d be ideal because they can do everything.”
Into it!
Unfortunately, the woman in charge of casting the film, Barbara Broccoli, has made it seem very likely the Bond franchise isn’t going to be challenging the status quo very much any time soon.
“Bond is male,” she told The Guardian in October. “He’s a male character. He was written as a male and I think he’ll probably stay as a male. And that’s fine. We don’t have to turn male characters into women. Let’s just create more female characters and make the story fit those female characters.”
Ugh, but what if we want to do BOTH, Barb?!
Either way, Broccoli’s statement doesn’t necessarily exclude the option of a transgender man (or a black man, or a gay man, or any other type of man) playing Bond, either next or in the near future, but the sentiment still suggests it’s likely not much will change.
But West’s idea is still a great one. So, who’s going to go ahead and create the transgender secret agent that will blow Bond out of the water? Don’t let this opportunity pass you by, H-wood!
