How ‘No Time to Die’ could evolve the concept of the ‘Bond girl’

Mentioning the words “James Bond” and “women” in the same sentence can truly ignite debate.

The Bond franchise’s uneasy history with feminism is well-documented and discussed. It’s a hard pill to swallow for some Bond fans like myself, rewatching the older films in the #MeToo age and recognising the undeniable problems that go with the franchise. Inappropriate workplace sexual innuendos are just the tip of the iceberg. 

But with even former 007s seeing change afoot, there’s always room to move forward. 

With the 25th film in the Bond franchise set to hit cinemas in April, these conversations have been bubbling up again. Directed by Cary Joji Fukunaga, No Time to Die is in the tricky spot of needing to play within the franchise’s almost 60-year legacy without ignoring its pitfalls. It’ll be Daniel Craig’s fifth film as 007, and will mark the actor’s final run as the British agent. But as with all endings, there are new elements to get truly excited about. 

During our visit to the set in London’s Pinewood Studios late last year, leads Lashana Lynch and Ana de Armas spoke about their roles — new characters Nomi and Paloma, respectively — and how No Time to Die is handling that evolution within an established movie empire.

“There’s a shift going on,” said de Armas. “Our producers understand what the situation in the world is, and what needs to be changed.” The Cuban actor added that the producers want to “keep moving, and they are aware of how many people follow this franchise,” so are aiming to create the film “without stepping away from the core and the essence of what a James Bond movie is.”

Both Lynch and de Armas said they don’t feel the weight of expectation on their shoulders when it comes to starring in a Bond film and moving the franchise forward to more progressive pastures.

“I never want to feel pressure. That’s the most exhausting feeling to have in this industry like there’s not enough to go around. To put it on yourself is kind of a waste of time in my opinion,” said Lynch. “It’s important to remember with any project why you were cast in the first place. We were cast because we’re capable women who hopefully were right for the role.”

“We have things to say and we have a community to support and you know, we have a responsibility but we’re artists. We just want to also just enjoy our job and have fun with it,” adds de Armas. “It shouldn’t feel like pressure. It should feel like, this is awesome, and I’m gonna do my best and hopefully people will love it or learn something from it, you know?”

Played by Captain Marvel star Lynch, Nomi has been one of the most anticipated new characters in the franchise after rumours that the character could take over the 007 title after the forthcoming 25th Bond film. That’s yet to be determined (simmer down, trolls), but one thing’s certain: The character of Nomi is not to be messed with.

Nomi is a British agent whom Bond first spies while he’s living in Jamaica then comes across again in Cuba. Producer Barbara Broccoli wouldn’t reveal much about the mysterious character, but confirmed she is a pilot. “She comes from a military background and she’s highly qualified and gives Bond a run for his money.” 

Broccoli said the role of Nomi was specified in the script as female but not as a person of colour. The producer described Lynch as an “extraordinary actress,” coming across her while she was performing in a production of Debbie Tucker Green’s Ear for Eye in London’s Royal Court.

“I didn’t know anything about the role, so I was just very excited for the franchise and the direction they were taking in casting a young, black Londoner,” said Lynch. “With what I aim to bring with every job, and every project that I enter, I like to know that I’m creating or bringing a certain level of authenticity from my culture to the movie, to the project, and for them to take that on board and to put as much detail into both London and Jamaica, which is who I am and what I represent.”

“We have a real chance to really educate the world and educate the industry on where we should be.”

Lynch praised the producers for “continuing to take more and more steps towards representing the world that I see when I walk out my door every morning,” and the potential power of a franchise as popular as Bond to promote change industry-wide.

“We have a real chance to really educate the world and educate the industry on where we should be, what steps we should be taking to represent many cultures around the world, and the black culture, and the black experience amongst different industries, which I think is what a lot of [Nomi’s] story tells in this movie.”

Though Lynch didn’t give anything away about the possibility of her character taking over the 007 callsign, she did broadly reflect on the experience of those rumours and the response to them.

“Even though we’re making many steps, many big strides in this industry, there are still thought patterns that continue to perpetuate this idea that we’re still not ready for something that should have happened or could potentially have happened years ago,” she said.

“So, being embraced by many women, many black women, many young girls, being hopefully some kind of shining light, a little bit of inspiration for people that have never seen something like that before … We’re just moving the needle more and more.”

De Armas’ character, Paloma, has so far only been described by Broccoli as “a Cuban agent that is a friend of Felix Leiter,” who first meets Bond when he gets into a bit of strife in Cuba. But whether she remains an ally or not remains to be revealed. 

The role of Paloma wasn’t originally in the script, and was written and developed by Fleabag creator Phoebe Waller-Bridge, who joined the writing team alongside veteran Bond screenwriters Neal Purvis and Robert Wade. Waller-Bridge’s involvement has been one of the big talking points for the Bond crew. 

It honestly makes sense, as Bond scripts have historically served up dollops of government spy language with a dry sense of humour — and Waller-Bridge did create Killing Eve after all.

“She has a British wit that is hard to master,” Lynch said. “She mastered it a very long time ago and with these being British characters and some characters from around the world in Britain, there’s a very front-footed sarcasm that comes with her work, or an awkwardness.”

Waller-Bridge she was not hired by Broccoli specifically for her gender and that “there wasn’t ever really a conversation about can you come in and help us with ‘the ladies’.” However, she spoke to last year about whether the agent can just be magicked out of his famously chauvinist past — whisked from the wink-wink-nudge-nudge era of Roger Moore, or the slap-heavy era of Sean Connery — with strong writing.

“There’s been a lot of talk about whether or not [the Bond franchise] is relevant now because of who he is and the way he treats women,” she told the publisher at the time. “I think that’s bollocks. I think he’s absolutely relevant now.” 

So, can you just make the character of James Bond feminist? “It has just got to grow,” said Waller-Bridge. “It has just got to evolve, and the important thing is that the film treats the women properly. He doesn’t have to. He needs to be true to this character.”

Whether Waller-Bridge was brought in to do it or not, de Armas brought up a good point about the unexpectedly glorious effect the Fleabag creator could have on the representation of women in the Bond franchise — in particular, the role of the so-called “Bond girl” and whatever that means in 2020.

“I never thought that I would be a ‘Bond girl’,” said de Armas. “It was something hard to imagine — it wasn’t reachable, that level of perfection, they’re all so cold, glamourous. But then when I read it on the page, you could easily tell it was Phoebe that wrote that because she was so not perfect. I was like, this mess going on here, I can do that. If that’s a Bond girl, I’ve been a Bond girl for life.”

The very concept of a “Bond girl” is highly polarising in 2020, evoking a sense of ownership and grouping the women who’ve crossed the path of 007 together under one moniker, whether they’re sexual dalliances or not. On the flip side, there’s a weird sense of gravitas to the label, which has been applied to strong allies and villains like Grace Jones’ May Day, Famke Janssen’s Xenia Onatopp, or Michelle Yeoh’s Wai Lin.

Christoph Linder, in the foreword for Lisa Funnell’s essay anthology, For His Eyes Only: The Women of James Bond, notes that 007’s general function has been a “floating signifier, periodically getting updated to reflect changing attitudes in society.

As Linder writes, “that process of signification depends on Bond’s relationship with women, ranging from his sexual conquests (and failures) in the form of so-called ‘Bond girls,’ to his increasingly charged flirtations with office co-workers like Miss Moneypenny, to his oedipal conflicts with the hybrid mother-father figure of Judi Dench’s M.”

However, he adds, there are also “ways in which women in the 007 series also function as floating signifiers in their own right, reflecting but also sometimes anticipating or undermining mainstream constructions of identity, agency, and power.”

So, can it be both?

Bond’s well-documented problem with women is something I’ve personally taken too long to truly wake up to, as I grew up watching, adoring, and naively glossing over the blatant issues of the Bond franchise before realising, yep, this ain’t cool. Distracted by tricky gadgets, slick cars, and hectic stuntwork, I used to palm off “classic Bond” moments: cringey innuendos, straight-up sexist dialogue, women depicted as mere tools to “pump for information” and be left hanging with a hat-tip and a terrible pun. 

None of this was OK, fellow Bond fans, even if our hero just did some kind of mad stunt flip. Historically, female characters in Bond act as overt distractions from the narrative as opposed to drivers of it, and in most cases, it’s positioned as an actual joke. But luckily, the more recent Bond films, particularly in the Craig chapter, have somewhat wised up to this. 

In the last few years, there’s been significant (if not tokenistic) movement on this, most notably by Judi Dench’s M, who superbly labeled Pierce Brosnan’s Bond a “sexist, misogynist dinosaur” in GoldenEye — then again, M’s also responsible for the aforementioned horrendous “pump” quote in Tomorrow Never Dies. In the Craig films, characters like Casino Royale’s fiercely motivated Vesper Lynd have given 007 a strong wake-up call beyond one-liners, but it remains to be seen how far No Time to Die will go. 

Lynch and de Armas at least gave me some hope, with what appear to be two strong, nuanced, fierce characters (judging from the little information we have at this point). If, as Waller-Bridge says, that Bond is “absolutely relevant now,” here’s hoping No Time to Die can bring 007 into 2020 with authenticity and awareness. 

As a painfully self-conscious feminist Bond fan, I really hope it works.

No Time to Die is expected for release April, 3, 2020.