DANIEL CRAIG CONTINUED
a smooth P.R. man. “He is by nature a much
more anarchic person, and he is not allowed
to be that within the franchise,” Mendes said.
“His natural position is to tell the truth.” After
Spectre, Craig told the truth. “I was never going
to do one again,” he told me. “I was like, ‘Is this
work really genuinely worth this, to go through
this, this whole thing?’ And I didn’t feel... I felt
physically really low. So the prospect of doing
another movie was just like, it was o≠ the
cards. And that’s why it has been five years.”
The hiatus between Spectre and No Time
To Die has been the second longest in the his-
tory of the franchise. And the production of
the 25th Bond has been no picnic. In August
2018, Danny Boyle, who shot Craig’s double
act with the Queen for the Olympics, walked
away from the film, citing creative di≠erences
with Broccoli and Wilson. “Danny had ideas,
and the ideas didn’t work out, and that was
just the way it was,” Craig said. At least four
versions of the script came and went. “I would
love to have gone into this and had a script
that we could shoot,” he said. “And it just
didn’t happen. There were so many things that
went against it.” Fukunaga, who is best known
for making HBO’s stylish True Detective, came
on board three months before production was
due to begin. Then Craig injured his ankle. The
release date was pushed. In June an explosion
at Pinewood injured a member of the crew.
The British tabloids called it a cursed film. “It
pisses me o≠,” Craig said. “Because I’m just
like, ‘Don’t curse our movie.’ And also, we’re
doing our best here.”
“The James Bond of it all,” as Craig some-
times says, was clearly a monster. He was more
involved in the writing than in any of his other
Bond films. “This is my last movie,” he told
me. “I’ve kept my mouth shut before and I’ve
stayed out of it and I’ve respected it and I’ve
regretted that I did.” Craig was instrumental
in hiring Waller-Bridge to work on the script,
partway through the shoot. When things
were rough, he didn’t hold back. “I’ve been
very forceful in meetings and often way too
blunt and probably completely rude,” Craig
said. “But I’m like, We’re here! Come on! And
I always say sorry.”
Waller-Bridge was more diplomatic. “He
is incredibly passionate about the work,” she
told me. “Bond is very close to his heart, and
he fights for the integrity of the character
every step of the way.”
Fukunaga said that Craig suggested dia-
logue for entire scenes of No Time To Die, try-
ing to give a voice to a character that many
writers find frankly intimidating. “Daniel’s
very adamant that Bond is the driving force
in everything,” Fukunaga said. “He’s the
jackhammer.” Craig worked himself into the
ground. “He is tireless,” Fukunaga told me. “He
will work until he’s basically crawling home.”
The first time we met, a few weeks after
the end of the shoot, Craig seemed almost
too close to it all. The production was too
large and too recent to make sense of it. “How
much of Phoebe’s is in there, who knows?”
Craig said. “We’re all in it somewhere.
Phoebe’s in it, Cary’s in it, the writers are in
it, but it’s a... We battled it and battled it and
battled it. Who knows?” he said. “I’m talking
to you now. I’ve seen bits of it. I haven’t seen
it. Who the fuck knows?”
But the truth is that after 14 years, busted
shoulders, busted knees, the best part of
$50million, a place in the pantheon, a happy
home, Craig didn’t feel it so much on No
Time To Die. “This one I was like, ‘Nah, it’s
not going to happen. It’s just not going to
happen.’ It doesn’t mean I wasn’t as wound
up and just as fucking, like, mad,” he said.
“Because the world outside sort of slightly
ceases to exist. When you’re in it, you’re in it,
and that’s the thing,” he said. And now Craig
is no longer completely in it. He can see a
world outside. “I don’t know what it is, maybe
having another kid, maybe just being older,”
he told me. “But all of these things, I was just
like, you know, fuck it. There are other things
that are more important.”
The last time I saw him was in London, a
few weeks later. Craig was wearing a large
brown leather cap and carrying an empty
suitcase. No one in the hotel lobby seemed to
recognize him. He was in a sprightly mood.
He was looking forward to the Golden Globes,
where he was nominated as best actor in a
musical or comedy for Knives Out. (The movie
has already made some $300 million, and
Craig is committed to being part of a planned
sequel.) “The success of it, going into Bond,
could not have come at a better time for
me,” he said. Craig was delighted by the con-
trasting performances: a prolix, Sondheim-
humming private eye, next to his taciturn,
tormented killer. “It’s not like, ‘Okay, this is
going to be my career after Bond.’ There’s no
plan to it. It’s just kind of worked out.” Craig
wasn’t about to shoot anything straightaway.
The next few months were all about signing
o≠ as 007. But unlike with some of the other
actors who have played Bond, it doesn’t make
much sense to worry about what Craig will do
next—especially when he sounds so unafraid.
“I’m pretty sure I can play just about any-
thing,” Craig told me. “Yeah. I’m pretty sure
I can, or at least I can make a fucking good
fist of it.”
It was early evening. We ordered some
beers from room service. Craig had spent
the day in a post-production studio in Soho,
recording dialogue for No Time To Die. That
morning, he had watched the film for the
first time. It was the reason he had crossed
the Atlantic. For security, the cut existed on
only one or two hard drives. “I couldn’t see
it in New York, I had to fly over,” Craig said.
“Everything is on such lockdown.”
No Time To Die was projected onto the wall
of an editing suite. There was no score, the
special e≠ects weren’t finished, but Craig’s
final Bond movie was done. He had been
allowed to invite a few people to the screening.
But he chose to watch it alone. “I need to just
be on my own, kind of experiencing it,” he told
me. The first few minutes are always unbear-
able: “Why am I standing like that? What am
I doing?” Craig said. But it passes, and then he
was the boy in the empty cinema by the sea
again, transported by a big, wild movie—only
now it was him was up on the screen, doing
whatever that is. “I think it works,” Craig said,
pausing on every word. “So hallelujah.”sam knight is a London-based sta≠ writer
for ‘The New Yorker.’ This is his first article
for gq.APRIL 2020 GQ.COM 97
Tall, with a goatee and a gravelly voice, Daniel
closely resembles a slightly melancholy Je≠
Bridges playing The Dude in The Big Lebowski.
He explained that the Aedes albopictus (or
Asian tiger mosquito) is believed to have
arrived in L.A. around 2001, after a surge of
interest in “lucky bamboo,” a popular indoor
plant that was shipped in from overseas. As
exports were packed into shipping containers,
Aedes albopictus tagged along. These days,
Daniel said, mosquitoes should generally be
considered as indiscriminate as fire: biting
everyone, rich or poor, and biting more peo-
ple than ever.
For Vector Control, to protect means to
patrol. A pair of Daniel’s inspectors, Mary
Campbell and Yessenia Curiel, rolled out to
visit homes. The first was in southeast L.A.
Campbell rang the doorbell, wearing a shiny
badge. She liked her job because it felt like a
mission, helping people avert catastrophe. For
example, she pointed out to me a tray of jars
against the side of the house. Aedes mosqui-
toes will breed in something as small as a bot-
tle cap, and the eggs can lie dormant for years,
only to be reanimated when adequately warm
and wet. Here each jar was full of water; inside
were mosquito larvae. When nobody answered,
Campbell and Curiel left behind a notice saying
they’d be back. People not answering the door
happens a lot, Campbell explained, particularly
in neighborhoods where residents potentially
feared a visit from immigration. In fact, Vector
Control had lately changed their uniforms to
look less like law enforcement, all because they
needed to speak to people. An outbreak was
only a matter of time.
The next house, five minutes away by car,
was in worse shape. On a street of modest sub-
urban homes, it looked like a garden center
operated by gutter punks. The front yard was
a jungle of fish tanks, plants in tires. Curiel
picked up a watering can lined with mosquito
eggs. The owner arrived, an older gentleman,
and Campbell told him that neighbors up
and down the block had complained about
mosquitoes. “I see them once in a while,” he
said defensively. Campbell and Curiel spent
several minutes explaining the problem. He
reluctantly let them see his backyard. It was
a hoarder’s rain forest of discarded furniture
and brimming boxes. Campbell grabbed a
bucket o≠ the ground and switched on her
flashlight. Inside were hundreds of eggs. “It’s
a nightmare scenario,” she whispered.
Daniel arrived at the house in a white
pickup. He tipped down his sunglasses to
absorb the scene. His investigators would
return soon to check on the progress. If the
owner didn’t comply, there could be fines of