Javier Bardem confirms his Skyfall villain absolutely wanted to bone Bond
Leave it to a great, risk-taking actor (and one time Pedro Almodovar leading man) to inject some same-sex heat into the staid old, infamously hetero James Bond franchise. According to Variety, at the BFI...
Leave it to a great, risk-taking actor (and one time Pedro Almodovar leading man ) to inject some same-sex heat into the staid old, infamously hetero James Bond franchise. According to Variety , at the BFI London Film Festival on Sunday, Javier Bardem, who memorably portrayed Skyfall ‘s Bond villain Raoul Silva, told audiences that not only was his criminal mastermind out to destroy British spy organization MI6, he was also out to get into the expertly tailored slacks of one Bond, James Bond.
Bardem, who credits Skyfall director Sam Mendes with being open to the move, states, “We went through the reading of it and [Mendes] was so open to what I was proposing to do with the sexuality of the character. Because I said, ‘Listen, all the villains have done everything to destroy the world, but what about something person[al]?
What about something like, besides destroying the world, he wants to have sex with Bond?'” Whatever your take on which, if any, of the long-running film series’ many villains have wanted to hop into the double-oh-sack with any of the various Bonds over the years (Donald Pleasance’s Blofeld certainly stroked that kitty pretty energetically while taunting Sean Connery), Bardem claims to be the first Bond Baddie to outright state that there was a sexual component to his secret agent animus.
In the film , Silva memorably caresses the bound Bond’s thighs and chest while purring, “We are the last two rats. We can either eat each other, or eat everyone else,” which counts as supervillain foreplay. (Daniel Craig’s Bond teasingly responds to Silva’s taunt, “Well, there’s a first time for everything,” with an enigmatic, “What makes you think this is my first time?”) As for Mendes, Bardem says that the director dutifully said he’d have to run the suggestion by the studio, but since the undeniably slash fiction-spawning scene appears in the actual film, it has to be assumed that the Broccoli family gave the sequence the thumbs up.
Bardem, who confesses to getting too starstruck to remember his lines during his first day on the Skyfall set, is no stranger to playacting attraction to his co-star, having once popped out of Craig’s oversized birthday cake in drag to sing “Happy Birthday” as Craig’s “Bond girl” for the night.
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