Every James Bond succession is really two castings. One happens in front of a camera; the other covers the decade of premieres, junkets, fan events and tabloid scrutiny that comes with the tuxedo. With the search for Daniel Craig’s successor now at final screen tests in London, the second audition, the one with no lens pointed at it, may count for as much as the first.

The Hollywood Reporter’s James Hibberd makes that argument in a column on the race, noting that oddsmakers, following THR’s own reporting, have installed Jack Lowden and Callum Turner as favorites. Lowden has spent years playing British intelligence agent River Cartwright on Apple TV’s Slow Horses, a role Hibberd says has long looked like an audition for Bond: drama, action, romance and stunts, delivered with a low-key, everyman energy that would hand Bond writers new notes. Turner, in Hibberd’s words, “looks like he might have been grown in a lab to play Bond” — handsome, suave and posh, which is his strength and, if producers want someone who feels more original, his risk. Jack O’Connell and Josh O’Connor are reportedly in the mix too, and Hibberd wonders whether leakers simply confused two similar names.

The quality that sidelines pundits overlook is the one producers will not. Bond may be a rogue who plays by his own rules, but the actor has to be the ultimate team player. Hibberd puts it bluntly: the actor “may not always be playing Bond, but will forever be a Bond.” That means no divisive public outbursts, no messy domestic disputes, no public benders; it means an agreeable brand ambassador who treats fans respectfully, plays along with the media circus around every release and is not a jerk on set during a shoot that typically runs about nine months.

The franchise has learned this the hard way. Producer Albert “Cubby” Broccoli called the casting of George Lazenby, Bond for a single film in 1969 before Sean Connery returned, his “biggest mistake in 16 years,” adding that the actor “just couldn’t deal with success. He was so arrogant.” His daughter Barbara Broccoli, who led the producing team until last year, told Variety in 2022: “When we cast Bond, it’s a 10-, 12-year commitment … Not everybody wants to do that.”

Hibberd’s cautionary tale from outside the franchise is Marvel’s casting of Jonathan Majors in a multi-film villain role, which ended in scandal and an announced movie being scrapped. Majors was one villain in an ensemble. A Bond, expected to sign for four or five films, is on camera in almost every scene.

Somewhere in London an actor may be firing a Walther PPK for the cameras right now. By Hibberd’s account, the harder test is everything that actor does for the next decade once the cameras stop.

Tags: casting, Daniel Craig, Callum Turner, Slow Horses, Jack Lowden, james bond