On any culture desk of any newsroom in Britain, the James Bond rumour mill will be a source of great distress. Every month for the past decade, ever since Daniel Craig first signalled at a changing of guards back in 2015, a new name is spoken into the ether of who it might be. Of course some reports carry more credence than others and certainly it seems that just about anyone with an IMDb page has had a go as frontrunner – but the names, they keep on coming.
Speculation has truly gone into overdrive recently, though, with Craig having hung up his holster a whole five years ago. Surely, we cry, there must be a new 007 on the horizon by now. All this to say, it was a blow to hear that today’s big James Bond announcement is not the name of the actor who will be playing him, but rather the name of the casting agent hired to begin the search for him.
That’s right – begin. What feels like a thousand names later, and the search is yet to even begin in earnest. Over the next months, Nina Gold – one of the most revered casting agents in Britain, whose star-finding abilities helped shape the ensembles of Game of Thrones, The Crown, Slow Horses, Baby Reindeer and the most recent Star Wars trilogy – will work with producers and director Denis Villeneuve to find their man.
And so for what feels like the billionth time, here are the latest James Bond frontrunners…
Callum Turner
Only six months ago did Callum Turner feel like a safe bet after reports emerged that the 35-year-old Brit was “blabbing all over town” that he was going to be donning the famed tuxedo. Bolstering these reports were rumours that his pop star fiancee Dua Lipa had snagged the job of recording the equally coveted next Bond theme. As far as rumours go, this one felt legitimate both in timing and nature. As my colleague put it back then, “Turner is famous and busy, but not too famous and busy”, meaning that while viewers may recognise him from hit shows and blockbusters such as The Capture and Emma, he’s got the availability required to take on an all-consuming, multi-year franchise. Don’t underestimate the power of having logistics on your side.
Jacob Elordi
The digital ink had barely dried on the thinkpieces around Callum Turner’s casting before it was announced that, actually, the 28-year-old Jacob Elordi was now “a shoo-in” after having allegedly met with Villeneuve and the Amazon executives behind the film. Certainly, the Wuthering Heights and Euphoria star – recently nominated for his first Oscar for Frankenstein – is tall enough and handsome enough and bankable enough to take on the part. But for the same reason that Turner seems feasible, Elordi doesn’t. Few young, male A-listers would be eager to play the same character for 10 years straight, and Elordi is a man with options. There’s also the Australianness of it all, too. Though advocates of the Brisbane-born star will be quick to point out that he wouldn’t be the first actor from down under to fake the accent, with Aussie George Lazenby having played 007 for just one film: 1969’s On Her Majesty’s Secret Service.
Harris Dickinson
This is one of those rumours that appeared as quickly as it dissipated – hooked on a string of Dickinson blockbuster outings like The Triangle of Sadness and Babygirl. That said, the 29-year-old Brit has the acting chops to make this one stick should he want to – and if he and Gold are indeed heading into an audition room in these coming weeks, there’s a decent chance he’ll come out on top. After all, Dickinson is no stranger to nabbing coveted parts; soon he will play John Lennon in Sam Mendes’s Beatles biopics. It’s also worth noting that despite the heavy-hitting projects on his IMDb page, Dickinson remains alluringly offline – enough of a blank canvas to disappear into the perfectly tailored tux.
Jack Lowden
Admittedly Jack Lowden lacks the star power of his alleged competitors. The 35-year-old Scotsman has flown under the radar for most of his career, which spans films such as Mary Queen of Scots and TV shows like the BBC’s War & Peace. According to Saorise Ronan, though, Lowden would make a superb James Bond – a belief Ronan holds so strongly that she’d be willing to sacrifice her own hypothetical role in the franchise if it came down to it. Nevermind that Ronan also happens to be his wife… Still, there are plenty of people who agree with her, after watching Lowden’s turn as the spy River Cartwright in Slow Horses. It’s clear this man has charisma in abundance, and isn’t that the most important quality of all?
Louis Partridge
There are plenty of reasons why Louis Partridge probably won’t be James Bond. For one thing, at 23 years old he would be the youngest 007 in history by a mile – and while, yes, producers are reportedly circling a much younger incoming superspy, 23 seems ludicrous. Do people under the age of 28 even like martinis? But there is some heft to this rumour still, given Partridge’s connection to Steven Knight, who is writing the new Bond script as we speak. Partridge starred in his Netflix series House of Guinness, and given Knight’s propensity to collaborate with the same people (as with Cillian Murphy, for example), perhaps he’s put in a good word for the young up-and-comer. And as for the age thing, maybe producers are thinking about longevity: were Partridge to do six or so Bond films over the next 15-ish years, he would still be under 40 by the time he gave it up. Plus he’d be considerably cheaper than some of the others on this list. Even superspies have budgets and Partridge would be more bang for your buck, as they say.
