Daniel Craig reveals his advice for the next James Bond would be ‘don’t be s**t’

Daniel Craig has revealed his blunt advice for whomever is given the role of James Bond next.

Speaking to Radio 1’s Becoming… Bond: A Daniel Craig Special, the actor, 53, would pass the torch with the simple words: ‘Don’t be s**t!’

Asked about the dry Bond wit that comes with the role, Daniel admitted he looks to two prior 007s for inspiration.

‘I’m a huge fan of Roger [Moore], I’m a huge fan of Pierce [Brosnan]. I’ve never wanted to emulate or copy what they did – I wanted to define it by what I did.

‘But one of the reasons I did Casino Royale, in that script when I got to the line ‘I want a vodka martini shaken not stirred’ and it was written in the script ‘Do I look like I give a f**k?’ and I was like ‘I’m in!’ – because if that’s where you’re going with this, that’s the direction I want to take it.’

As Daniel prepares to say goodbye to the role of the spy in the upcoming No Time To Die, he recalled how he landed the role.

‘I got a phone call – well, my agent got a phone call – and said ‘Barbara [Broccoli] wants to see you’ and I was a bit like, ‘Well, come on, really?’ It was very unclear what it was about,’ he recalled.

Daniel said: ‘I’m a huge fan of [L-R] Roger [Moore], I’m a huge fan of Pierce [Brosnan]. I’ve never wanted to emulate or copy what they did – I wanted to define it by what I did’

‘I thought maybe it’s a part or it’s something in the next movie and I went to see Barbara and Michael [G. Wilson] at Eon in Piccadilly and they said ‘We want you to be the next James Bond.’

‘I was like ‘Come on, what are you talking about?’ Look: when I was a kid of course I dreamt of being James Bond but I dreamt of being Spider-Man and Superman and Batman and everybody else.

‘But as an actor I just thought ‘That’s not happening’ and I was really happy with that, I was doing some really interesting jobs and my career was going great guns so it wasn’t an ambition of mine.’

He said: ‘One of the reasons I did Casino Royale, in that script when I got to the line ‘I want a vodka martini shaken not stirred’ and it was written in the script ‘Do I look like I give a f**k?’ and I was like ‘I’m in!”

On what has made the Bond character so successful 50 years in, Daniel mused: ‘There are many many things, I think one of the things really is that the Broccolis have kept it ‘event cinema’. When it first came out there was nothing like it.

‘Now there are how many action movies made a year? But it still has a special place because there are all these wonderful things attached to it, there’s the song, there’s the pre-title sequence, there’s the title sequence, there’s ‘Who’s the villain going to be?’ There’s all these questions that need to be answered before the movie comes out and that gets a buzz around the film that’s difficult to recreate with other movies.

‘There’s a stiff upper lip to him but there’s also a style – the tailoring, the cars – which all feels particularly British to me which is fun to play with and I really get a kick out of doing all of that.’

End of an era: Daniel prepares to say goodbye to the role of the spy in the upcoming No Time To Die [pictured in Skyfall (2012) with co-star Naomie Harris]

On what direction he gets playing Bond, he said: ‘It’s difficult because you can probably tell I’m a bit giggly and like to have a laugh… I would laugh all the way through it if I could but I think sometimes I have to get a bit more serious. I think that’s the best note you can get: ‘More Bond, less Bond!”

Daniel admitted to taking clothes with him from the set, adding: ‘I keep the clothes only because they get worn in so nicely, within in the space of the shoot it looks like I’ve owned them for ten years and they’re the kind of clothes I like and… there are a couple of watches I’ve been given which are really nice.’

The full interview is available to watch on Radio 1’s iPlayer Channel and YouTube now; it is also available to listen to on Radio 1’s Screen Time Podcast on BBC Sounds.