Lashana Lynch, the first female 007: ‘I never had a plan B’
Lashana Lynch knew she was on a very short shortlist. She had taped a couple of auditions for Barbara Broccoli, the producer of the James Bond films since 1995. She met and read with Daniel Craig, who would be making his fifth and final appearance in No Time To Die, the 25th 007 adventure, a new release that you may have caught wind of by now. Then, finally, there was the stunt test, overseen by the Bond stunt and armoury teams (yes those are actual departments).
Is that like circuit training? “Deeper than that,” Lynch replies. “They hand you a bunch of weapons and they teach you a routine for a few seconds or a minute and then you basically have to copy the routine. So it was like, ‘OK, grab the gun! Shoot! Get down on your knees! Shoot! Roll on your back! Land on your feet! Shoot! Run, run, run! You’ve run out of ammo! Throw that away! Assemble this gun! Shoot!’ And that was the first out of five routines they taught me.”
What sounds like a traumatising stress dream was for Lynch like adult softplay. “I go to the gym,” she says, “and I was ready with my gym clothes: ‘Come on, we’re doing this!’ Then they showed me the first routine and I was like, ‘Sorry, go back. OK, what’s the first move out of those 10m moves you just taught me? Because that went waaaay over my head.’ But it just gave me an insight into
