Fleabag's Phoebe Waller-Bridge Says She's Added 'Little Spices' to New James Bond Film Script
No Time to Die is getting a little script assistance from Phoebe Waller-Bridge.
The Fleabag creator and actress, 34, opened up to BBC Radio on Friday about her involvement in the upcoming 25th installment in the James Bond film series.
Waller-Bridge was brought in “to help out” on the screenplay, she said, not write it entirely.
That included adding what she called “little spices” to the script, including “a couple of bits and pieces of my own, and hope that they survive the process.”
And as for its reported post-#MeToo culture changes to tone down the macho culture of the franchise? The Emmy-winning star stressed, “they were already doing that.”
“They’re having that conversation with themselves the whole time,” Waller-Bridge explained. “[My involvement] was much more practical. Just, ‘You’re a writer, we need some help with these scenes. And you come up with some dialogue for these characters.’ “
Never miss a story — sign up for PEOPLE’s free daily newsletter to stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer, from juicy celebrity news to compelling human interest stories.
RELATED: Former 007 Pierce Brosnan Says It Would Be ‘Exhilarating’ for a Woman to Play James Bond
Waller-Bridge added to the BBC that the film’s crew were “just looking for tweaks across a few of the characters and a few of the storylines” as opposed to a rewrite.
For a job, “it doesn’t get cooler,” she said.
“We met for coffee and then a few months later we met again,” she recalled of producer Barbara Broccoli, who initially sought her out. “And then I met the director Cary Joji Fukunaga and then I met Daniel [Craig] after that. But I know Daniel and Barbara had been talking about it for while.”
No Time to Die will mark only the third time in the film series’ history that a woman will have a writing credit on the screenplay. The first and second were both for Johanna Harwood, who worked on the story for the first two James Bond films: Dr. No (1962) and From Russia with Love (1963).
In a May interview with Deadline, Waller-Bridge addressed whether she thought the James Bond franchise “is relevant now because of who he is and the way he treats women” — a debate she called “bollocks.”
“I think he’s absolutely relevant now. It has just got to grow,” she added. “It has just got to evolve, and the important thing is that the film treats the women properly. He doesn’t have to. He needs to be true to this character.”
Waller-Bridge — who is also known for her work as showrunner and executive producer for Killing Eve season 1 — is fresh off the success of her breakout series Fleabag, which nabbed her three wins at this year’s Emmy Awards: outstanding writing for a comedy series, outstanding lead actress in a comedy series and outstanding comedy series.
“I quite like the idea of coming back to her, well, me, when I’m 50,” the actress said on Late Night with Seth Meyers in October of a potential third season. ” ‘Cause I feel like [my character] would’ve had more life then, and God knows what she would have got up to.”
No Time to Die hits theaters on April 8, 2020.
Source: Read Full Article