When Lashana Lynch joined the James Bond cast, there were rumours she would pinch the title role for herself, says Tim Lewis in The Observer. Lynch plays Nomi, not a Bond girl but an agent. I’m perfectly happy as Nomi, she says, but anyone could play Bond next: man or woman, black or white, young or old. “At the end of the day, even if a two-year-old was playing Bond, everyone would flock to the cinema to see what this two-year-old’s gonna do.”
Still, if a woman were to play 007, Lynch is the obvious choice. The 33-year-old – “tall, probably 5ft 9in, and lithe” – looks like she was born for action films. She’s fearless, too. The perk of the job was the stunts, she says. “I asked the stunt team if they could make me into a ninja and they said yes.” It worked. Unlike Craig, who has lost teeth, broken his leg and had the tip of a finger sliced off doing Bond, Lynch emerged unscathed. “The stunt team were like, ‘Who are you? An alien?’”
She certainly has otherworldly confidence. It’s because of my family, says Lynch, who was born in 1980s Shepherd’s Bush – a child of Jamaican Windrush parents. She was the youngest and the only girl, but that didn’t matter. “There’s an attitude and a swagger that comes with just being born into a Jamaican family. You know how to stand up for yourself. Pretty instantly, like out of the womb, you’re already taking charge.” The perfect preparation for Bond.