Daniel Craig on his ‘complicated’ James Bond and the character’s finale in ‘No Time to Die’

For The Win spoke with Daniel Craig about his iconic James Bond before 'No Time to Die' hits theaters.

It’s Bond, James Bond Week here at For The Win, where we’ve shaken (not stirred) five days’ worth of content to celebrate the premiere of the iconic franchise’s 25th movie, No Time to Die.

After 15 years as James Bond, Daniel Craig is saying goodbye to the iconic role he made his own through five films, ending with No Time To Die, which hits U.S. theaters on Friday.

Craig closes his final chapter in the Bond franchise with his scarred, steely yet in-love character with serious trust issues coming out of retirement to save the world from Rami Malek’s creepy, horrifying villain in Lyutsifer Safin. Although No Time to Die is clearly more of a sequel to Spectre and less of a standalone production, it has the feel of an old-school Bond film while also humanizing the character more than any other entry on Craig’s resume.

Ahead of the movie’s release in the U.S., For The Win sat down (virtually) with 53-year-old Craig to talk about his Bond portrayal over the years and the end of an era. (No spoilers!)

This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.

Congratulations on the film. You’ve been playing James Bond for now what amounts to 15 years. How would you describe who James Bond is when you first appeared as him in Casino Royale versus at the end of No Time to Die?

I suppose, like myself at the time. I was very naive and green and kind of didn’t really know how enormous everything was back then, how big the the franchise was. Although, I’d been watching it most of my life, so I kind of knew, I suppose.

Hopefully, he’s sort of emotionally grown through the films because I felt like that was something interesting to explore. Every movie that we’ve made, we’ve set out to make the best James Bond movie, because that’s what we were trying to do.

But I’ve just felt like, to make him complicated and conflicted and all sorts of things just to try and make the drama of it all more interesting. I don’t know. I’ve tried to put as much of myself into it as I possibly could.

How would you describe your James Bond in one word?

Oh, I don’t know if I could do that. I don’t know. Leaving.

On that note, how do you feel about the way James Bond’s overall story arc ended?

I’m very, very happy. I’m very happy that we managed to be able to tell a story all the way through. You know, it’s not something that has been done a narrative like that — although the books do have a kind of through line to them, partly Ian Fleming hating on him a lot.

But I’m very proud of this movie, as I am with all the movies. But I’m very proud of where we got to.

Every Friday, there’s a clip from you on Saturday Night Live that circulates around the internet introducing The Weeknd. How do you how do you feel about people using that to celebrate?

I only found out about that recently because I don’t have any — I’m not on social media or anything like that. So someone told me about it.

And I think it’s nice. I haven’t seen it. So I mean, I remember doing it, but I haven’t seen — I didn’t realize the impact that it had made. But it’s an unknown to me.

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— ladies and gentlemen, the weekend (@CraigWeekend) October 1, 2021