Eiza González knows who should be the next James Bond: Cavill, Henry Cavill.
The two actors star together in Guy Ritchie’s upcoming comedic action film The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare. Partially based on real historical events (uncovered in recently declassified British War Department files), the film follows the creation of the first-ever special forces organization: the Special Operations Executive. Formed at Winston Churchill’s behest at the outset of World War II, the espionage group had a major impact on the Allies’ eventual victory over the Nazis. The author of the James Bond books, Ian Fleming, also gets wrapped up in the hijinks.
González plays intelligence agent Marjorie Stewart, while Cavill portrays team leader Gus March-Phillipps, who is said to be the real-life inspiration for James Bond. Now, González wants to see Cavill get the license to… play Bond, too.
“It’s hard not to look at Henry Cavill and think of James Bond, to be really honest,” González tells Entertainment Weekly. “Obviously, I’m part of the group of people that are rooting for him to get it hopefully, if that was a possibility.”
While a recent report claimed that Kraven the Hunter star Aaron Taylor-Johnson had been offered the role and would replace Daniel Craig as Bond, a source close to the situation told EW that no official offer had been made. Taylor-Johnson did not comment when asked about the rumors in a recent Rolling Stone U.K. feature. Meanwhile, Cavill was up against Craig for the role of Bond back before production began on what would turn out to be the latter’s first Bond movie, 2006’s Casino Royale.
While González was filming scenes with Cavill in The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare, she jokes that it was “really not so hard” to imagine that they were shooting an actual Bond film. “You’re on a set staring at Henry Cavill, and you have Ian Fleming [played by Freddie Fox] sitting there in that opening scene that we have,” she adds. “There’s nothing cooler when you’re watching a movie and worlds collide, like you see Ian Fleming there and seeing him part of a mission, how that really transformed into what we know now as James Bond, and what came out of it, and him becoming a writer. I love that about the film.”
But González also notes that her character Marjorie isn’t just a “Bond Girl” love interest for Gus — even though the two eventually fell in love and got married in real life. “We see these movies, and romance is a big part of these films, and don’t get me wrong, I love romance, and there’s nothing more magical than seeing that James Bond moment where it’s so sexy,” she says. “But I really liked that each character was just solely focused on their skills and their job and their wits, and nothing was distracted from the mission. Rarely do we get to see female characters involved in such a heavily masculine cast that has no emotional relationship on screen with them. I thought that was fascinating and really, really cool and unique.”
Bringing Marjorie’s story to life onscreen and highlighting how integral she was to the operation was a career highlight for González. “I find her quite like James Bond herself,” she adds. “She is smart, quick, witty, interesting, dynamic. She’s just the coolest, so I think that a lot of the inspiration for those roles probably came from both male and female, not just men.”
The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare opens in theaters April 19.
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