‘I’m such a feminist,” Helen Mirren told Saga magazine, but there are some jobs a woman can’t do. To be precise: “You can’t have a woman [as James Bond]. It just doesn’t work. James Bond has to be James Bond, otherwise it becomes something else.”
Mirren is starring opposite Pierce Brosnan in the film adaptation of Richard Osman’s The Thursday Murder Club, in which they both play amateur sleuths in a care home. Happily, that is a unisex job. Brosnan might also describe himself as “such a feminist” – he has never said so explicitly, but in 2019, he said a female Bond would be “exhilarating”. However, he’s now back on team men, saying: “I’m so excited to see the next man come on the stage and to see a whole new exuberance and life for this character.” Exhilaration, excitement, exuberance: all qualities I don’t think I’ve ever seen in any Bond, across the great gamut of maleness, from Connery to Craig. But who am I to judge? Whenever 007 gets a new pen that can poison someone from 50 paces, the thrill racing through his veins might be implied by his slightly less stern visage. Truly, masculinity is an unknowable frontier.
