Pierce Brosnan admits he’s in ‘certain agreement’ that James Bond is profoundly sexist

Helen Mirren raised some hackles this week by giving her take on James Bond. The veteran British actor is starring alongside former Bond Pierce Brosnan in Paramount Plus show MobLand, and didn’t mince words when she was quizzed on her thoughts about 007: “The whole series of James Bond, it was not my thing. It really wasn’t. I never liked James Bond. I never liked the way women were in James Bond.”

Mirren went on to say that Bond is “drenched” in “profound sexism” and argued that instead of trying to push for the character to be recast as a woman, producers should focus on telling the stories of real-life women in the history of espionage.

Now Pierce Brosnan himself has weighed in. As a highly regarded former Bond (we will overlook Die Another Day) he would ordinarily be expected to avoid hot-button conversations like these. However, taking a diplomatic tone, he said he doesn’t necessarily disagree with Mirren.

When asked by People if he thought Mirren was right, he responded “Yes, there’s a certain agreement there”, but clarified “there’s a certain world and room to move within the proscenium arch of what Ian Fleming put down. So there’s always going to be conflict.”

As early as the Timothy Dalton films it was generally accepted that Bond’s historical attitude to women wasn’t necessarily great. Brosnan’s movies tackled this, with M introducing him in GoldenEye as a “sexist, misogynist dinosaur” and the films generally pairing him with women who could hold their own against him. By the time of Daniel Craig, internal criticism of Bond’s sexism was practically baked into the writing, with Lashana Lynch’s Nomi even taking the “007” codename.

In a bit of inter-Bond bickering, Daniel Craig once took aim at Brosnan’s Bond in 2015, saying his take on the character wasn’t as “sexist and misogynist” as his. Brosnan defended his movies, saying that he “never thought of him like that” and that he was a “solitary, enigmatic character” that was “very ****ing lonely”.

It remains to be seen what Amazon will do with the character, but after seizing creative control amidst reported frustrations that a new Bond movie was taking too long to make, expect an unveiling of the next 007 very soon. Jeff Bezos, who’s recently been burnishing his anti-woke credentials by cozying up to Donald Trump, may want a more traditional take on the character, so we could see the resurrection of something akin to Sean Connery and Roger Moore. But for now, all we can do is wait and believe that “James Bond will Return”.