Did Mads Mikkelsen just admit to tickling Daniel Craig’s nether region?!
The two smoking hot actors met on the set of Casino Royale, where Craig made his debut as the new James Bond and Mikkelsen played the villain Le Chiffre.
“[Back then] he [Craig] was the new Bond and everything about him was ‘wrong.’ His height, his nose, his hair. I think he was glad I also came from indie films. He had a partner in crime,” the Hannibal star told Variety at the Zurich Film Festival where Mikkelsen was receiving the Golden Eye award in recognition of his “successful career and versatility.”
The 56-year-old Danish actor then dropped a bombshell revelation that we’re still not fully recovered from. “There was this scene where I tickled his balls with a rope,” Mikkelsen said. “We had so many ideas and the director just looked at us: ‘Guys, come back. It’s a Bond movie’.”
We’re going to need a minute…
This isn't the first time Mikkelsen has acted in a scene with homoerotic undertones. He also starred alongside Hugh Dancy in Hannibal, a show that many fans thought teased viewers with the chemistry between the two male leads that often felt like it was going to lead to more. And Craig himself plays the gay detective Benoit Blanc in both Knives Out and It's sequel Glass Onion.
Although many of us have probably dreamed of being that close to 007, sadly the scene that ended up in the final cut of the film isn’t quite as hot as the picture Mikkelsen painted. In it, Mikkelsens’ character ties Craig’s Bond naked to a chair before torturing him with a rope in the hopes of getting the bruised and bloody Bond to tell him the password to a bank account.
Anytime rope is involved it can be sexy—especially when two sweaty, hunky actors are involved—but that doesn’t sound like our cup of tea. So what do we have to do to get convince the studio to release a director’s cut that includes the “tickle” version of that scene?
Ariel Messman-Rucker is an Oakland-born journalist who now calls the Pacific Northwest her home. When she’s not writing about politics and queer pop culture, she can be found reading, hiking, or talking about horror movies with the Zombie Grrlz Horror Podcast Network.
Ariel Messman-Rucker is an Oakland-born journalist who now calls the Pacific Northwest her home. When she’s not writing about politics and queer pop culture, she can be found reading, hiking, or talking about horror movies with the Zombie Grrlz Horror Podcast Network.
