Luke Evans is one of many actors whose name keeps coming up in speculation about who might be tapped to succeed Daniel Craig as the future cinematic super spy James Bond.
In a recent Bustle profile, the 43-year-old who will next appear in Disney’s live-action Pinocchio remake, was asked whether audiences are ready for a gay 007.
“I don’t know what the current temperature is with audiences,” Evans said, “whether they care enough to worry about what James Bond does in the bedroom.”
“I don’t think it really matters at all to the character if I’m really honest,” he added
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But Evans didn’t completely dismiss the notion that he could play Bond. He described the intense physical training he did to prepare for his role in AppleTV+’s upcoming Echo 3.
“The reason I said we should talk about Echo 3,” Evans said, “is when you talk about James Bond, that kind of training, every day I was playing that special services kind of character who you put into any environment and [he] survives.”
An openly gay actor taking on the role of the iconic spy would, of course, be huge. Plus, it’s a development that audiences and filmmakers seem to be hankering for.
The five Bond films in which Craig starred between 2008 and 2021 did a lot to prime fans for a more modern take on the character. Skyfall (2012), the most acclaimed film in Craig’s run, featured an extremely homoerotic scene between 007 and Javier Bardem’s creepy Bond villain Raoul Silva. In 2021’s No Time to Die, the final film of the series, out actor Ben Whishaw’s version of tech genius Q was revealed to be gay.
For years there has also been consistent chatter among fans about a future non-white, non-male, non-straight version of Bond.
Whishaw himself mentioned Evans, along with Bridgerton star Jonathan Bailey as out actors who could play the role. Bond alum Pierce Brosnan seemed open to the idea of a gay 007, but doubted whether producer Barbara Broccoli would allow such a thing. Gillian Anderson, Idris Elba, and most recently Henry Golding have all been considered — at least by the Internet — as potential candidates to take on the role.
Meanwhile, Heartstoppers breakout Yasmin Finney recently expressed interest in playing the first-ever openly trans Bond girl in a future installment in the film franchise.
