Dame Judi Dench says Daniel Craig was behind the decision to kill off her character, M, in 2012’s Skyfall. She makes the claim in her new memoir, Is It Too Late to Make a Run For It?, and Variety published an exclusive excerpt covering her eight Bond films as M. The book is out from St. Martin’s Press and takes the form of a conversation with actor and director Brendan O’Hea.
IGN reports that Dench learned M’s fate over dinner at the Wolseley restaurant. Producers Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson took her there with director Sam Mendes, and they outlined the plot and told her she was being written out. Dench says she doesn’t think Craig was at the table, which is why she words the revelation carefully: “Apparently, it was Daniel’s idea to have me killed.” She delivers it tongue in cheek, adding that it was her own fault.
A wish granted, fatally
Dench’s reasoning is that she’d asked for this. She says she had begged the producers to let her out from behind her desk ever since GoldenEye, when the rest of the unit travelled to Monte Carlo and St. Petersburg while she spent three days shooting in Watford. Skyfall did finally get her into the field, and then, in her words, “they shot me.”
Before that, she says, came the indignity of being sacked by Ralph Fiennes, a line she follows with an expletive and a laugh. Fiennes’ character took over as M after her death. Dench’s M did return posthumously for a short cameo in Spectre. Dench had first played the role in 1995 opposite Pierce Brosnan in his Bond debut.
The hardest Bond shoot
Dench also says Tomorrow Never Dies (1997) was the most difficult Bond film to make, because of what she describes as a general air of chaos. Last-minute rewrites were the main problem. She says new scenes arrived daily, and one night a motorcycle courier delivered a dozen new pages to her home at 10pm, with her pick-up set for 5am the next morning. Rewrites aren’t unusual on a film, she says, but the script for that one seemed to be in permanent flux.
The memoir lands while the franchise is between leads. IGN says Amazon MGM Studios’ search for the next Bond is nearing its end, with Callum Turner, Jack Lowden and Josh O’Connor reportedly the frontrunners to succeed Craig. We’ve been following that process, including Nina Gold leading the casting hunt and Idris Elba saying he was never in the race.
Did Judi Dench say Daniel Craig told the producers to kill M?
She says it was “apparently” his idea, and adds that she doesn’t think he was at the dinner where the producers told her. She doesn’t describe hearing it from Craig himself, and none of the coverage we found includes a response from him.
When is Judi Dench’s memoir out?
Is It Too Late to Make a Run For It? was published on 3 November by St. Martin’s Press. We haven’t checked UAE retailer availability.
Which Bond films did Dench appear in?
She played M in eight films, from GoldenEye in 1995 to Skyfall in 2012, with the eighth appearance being her brief cameo in Spectre.
