Ralph Fiennes has revealed that he pushed back against an idea to make his Bond character a villain, calling it a "red line" for him.
Fiennes made his franchise debut in director Sam Mendes' 2012 Bond movie Skyfall. At the end of the film, Fiennes' character Gareth Mallory succeeds Judi Dench's Olivia Mansfield as Bond's MI6 boss, M.
However, when it came to Mendes' suggestions for the M in the 2015 follow-up movie Spectre, Fiennes put his foot down. "I think I can say now that I had to fight off an attempt by Sam in Spectre to make M – I said I don’t want to play M and then you turn around and make him the bad guy," Fiennes revealed on Josh Horowitz’s Happy Sad Confused podcast.
"M is never the bad guy," Fiennes continued. "So I had to have some pretty intense discussions with Sam saying, ‘This is not flying with me.' It was like he was Blofeld or something, but that was a red line."
During the interview, Fiennes also spoke candidly about the time he was in discussions with Bond producer Barbara Broccoli about playing 007 himself. "I’m not sure I’d have been very good at Bond,” he admitted. “I liked the books a lot when I was in my teens. I like the films, particularly the earlier [Sean] Connery films. I had a teenage obsession with Bond so when that day came, of course I was flattered."
Are you glad Ralph Fiennes pushed back against making M a baddie?