{"id":525320,"date":"2026-06-30T05:56:14","date_gmt":"2026-06-30T05:56:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/525320\/"},"modified":"2026-06-30T05:56:14","modified_gmt":"2026-06-30T05:56:14","slug":"james-bond-casting-director-weighs-in-on-jacob-elordi-callum-turner","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/525320\/","title":{"rendered":"‘James Bond’ Casting Director Weighs in on Jacob Elordi, Callum Turner"},"content":{"rendered":"

The hunt for the next James Bond<\/a> is on, with names like young Hollywood stars Callum Turner, Jacob Elordi and Harris Dickinson swirling as rumored frontrunners. But not if Debbie McWilliams has any say in it. The longtime \u201cJames Bond\u201d casting director who found the last three iterations of the agent, including Daniel Craig, has yet to be impressed.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t want to see any of them as James Bond,\u201d she told The Independent<\/a> on Monday.<\/p>\n

McWilliams bore the responsibility of casting the past three men to take on the 007 moniker, tapping Craig, Pierce Brosnan and Timothy Dalton for the role in their respective years with the franchise. McWilliams saw all of those men through their Bond careers, shepherding the franchise\u2019s casting from 1981\u2019s \u201cFor Your Eyes Only\u201d (starring Roger Moore) to 2021\u2019s Craig finale \u201cNo Time to Die.\u201d<\/p>\n

The key, McWilliams said, to casting these men for the role was that they were all relatively unknown by the time they got the part. For the next Bond, she likewise wants to see someone \u201ccompletely out of the blue.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Milly\t\t\t\t\t<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cTimothy and Pierce weren\u2019t particularly well known,\u201d McWilliams said. \u201cDaniel had had a career in independent films and a fairly colourful romantic life beforehand, but he wasn\u2019t a household name, and that helps enormously.\u201d<\/p>\n

McWilliams will not return to cast the next James Bond, directed by Denis Villeneuve and penned by Steven Knight. That job goes to Nina Gold, a prolific casting director who this year became one of the first Best Casting nominees at the Academy Awards for her work on \u201cHamnet.\u201d Though Gold has yet to make an official statement (and McWilliams too restrains from sharing any inside info lest she get \u201csued\u201d by new \u201cBond\u201d owner Amazon), her predecessor shared a piece of advice: \u201cIt is absolutely essential that he retains a total enigma.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t want to see (Dickinson, Elordi or Turner) as Bond because we now know so much about them,\u201d McWilliams explained. \u201cWe want to know as little about them personally as possible, because that\u2019s what spies are. We don\u2019t need to know where he goes shopping or who his parents are, or where he lives. We never want to see him at home. And a vital element of the whole thing is his job description. He\u2019s licensed to kill, and we have to believe that he can do that. If you don\u2019t, then you\u2019ve lost the audience.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\"James\t\t\t\t\t<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The hunt for the next James Bond is on, with names like young Hollywood stars Callum Turner, Jacob…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":525321,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[3468,47453,223733,93,61,60,9404,18747,270,195227],"class_list":["post-525320","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-amazon","tag-callum-turner","tag-debbie-mcwilliams","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-jacob-elordi","tag-james-bond","tag-movies","tag-nina-gold"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/525320","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=525320"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/525320\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/525321"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=525320"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=525320"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=525320"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}