Saïd Taghmaoui says Danny Boyle cast him as the main villain but is uncertain whether he’ll be in Bond 25 following director’s departure.
French-American actor Saïd Taghmaoui said Danny Boyle selected him for the lead villain in Bond 25. Speaking in Abu Dhabi to United Arab Emirates website The National, Taghmaoui said:
I’m supposed to do the next James Bond, playing the lead bad guy.
However, he admitting the role was uncertain after Boyle’s departure from the production, adding:
We don’t know who the director will be, and the producers don’t know if they’re going to go Russian or Middle East with the baddie right now. I literally just received a message saying: ‘If they go Middle East, it’s you. If they go Russian, it’s someone else.’ It’s the story of my life. Always on that line between something that could change my life and something that disappears.
Taghmaoui was born in France to Moroccan immigrants and was a boxer before he took up acting. Over the course of his career he has appeared in both French and English language films, including Marc Forster’s Kite Runner (2007). Most recently he played Sameer in Wonder Woman (2017).
Danny Boyle’s departure from Bond 25 was announced in August. A brief statement from Eon Productions cited creative differences.
A credible version of events is that the producers wanted to bring in a new script writer. One of Boyle’s conditions for directing the next Bond film was that it was based on a story conceived by him with John Hodge. Hodge is his long term writing partner and wrote the screenplay, which Boyle objected to being reworked.
When asked about the typecasting of Arab actors in Hollywood Taghmaoui replied that he had turned many roles down. Adding that he believed Bond “could be seen as a big cliche”, he went on to say:
[A]rtistically it’s great to play bad guys. It’s the stereotype and the cliche that’s the problem. Actually playing a bad guy is great, but you have to watch out for the cliche and the propaganda.
Source: The National
