Daniel Craig and Rami Malek are dishing about “No Time To Die” in the latest issue of Entertainment Weekly.
With Bond 25’s hero and villain gracing the cover of the magazine, the actors are opening up about Oscar-winning director Danny Boyle’s exit from the film due to “creative differences.”
Boyle and long-time writing partner John Hodge (“Trainspotting”, “Shallow Grave”) were announced on the project back in May 2018, but by August of that year, producers Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson confirmed they had left the project. Now, Craig and Malek are addressing rumours there was conflict about whether James Bond should live or die at the film’s conclusion.
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“I’m a huge fan of Danny and I’d love to work with him. It didn’t work out. It happens all the time in movies. It’s just, in a Bond movie, it becomes this huge event that gets blown up,” Craig tells EW. Producer Broccoli adds, “the movie he wanted to make [and] the movie we wanted to make were not the same movie.”
Boyle previously said his vision didn’t line-up with that of the production team: “What we were doing was good. But it was obviously not what they wanted.” He was eventually replaced by director Cary Fukunaga with “Fleabag” phenom Phoebe Waller-Bridge co-writing the screenplay based on Craig’s personal recommendation.
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“She’s the best f***ing writer around,” he says. Co-star Malek agrees.
“She had quite an impact on what I was doing,” the “Bohemian Rhapsody” star, who plays the villain in “No Time To Die” says. “I’d have long phone conversations with her, giving her context as to what we were essentially looking for in the scenes, and she would turn things over incredibly quickly. We know her as a very witty and funny writer, but she’s got a knack for drama and tension as well.”
Things didn’t exactly run smoothly in front of the camera, either. While filming a scene with Craig running, the actor, 51, suffered an ankle injury.
“I was running down a floating dock, and it was wet, and I slipped, and I fell over, and my ankle exploded,” Craig explains. “Unfortunately, I’ve been in the same situation before and I know the feeling of a rupturing tendon. I was just like, ‘Oh, f***.'”
After pausing production so he could return to London for surgery, taking time off to recuperate, Craig was back at it again. The actor says the injury and subsequent phone call to wife Rachel Weisz is what further cemented his decision not to return to the iconic 007 role following “No Time To Die”.
“I finished that movie with a broken leg,” she says. “I had to question myself: Was I physically capable of doing [another one] or did I want to do another one? Because that phone call to your wife saying ‘I’ve broken my leg’ is not pleasant.”
“No Time To Die” hits theatres on April 10.
