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As fans wait for him to reprise his role as Homelander on Prime Video’s The Boys next year, Antony Starr has a plum spot on the 2025 movie schedule. The New Zealand-born actor plays a terrorist in the upcoming action movie G20, and the role, which he plays opposite Viola Davis, seems akin to a James Bond villain.Which kind of feels like a bit of poetry when you take into account that Starr’s Casino Royale audition recently leaked. And, now, the actor has an excellent take on his 007 tryout.
That aforementioned clip, along with reels showing actors such as Henry Cavill and Sam Worthington also trying their hand at the metaphorical poker table, has been quite the topic of discussion. So obviously, when Antony Starr appeared on the Happy Sad Confused podcast, host/Bond Whisperer Josh Horowitz had to ask how the man felt about that experience. What you’ll read below is Starr’s apt description of auditioning for Bond in the early aughts, and I can’t argue with his chosen metaphor:
My metaphor for that was like throwing a baitless hook into a very large pond, knowing you’re not gonna catch the fish. I’ve seen it. That was when Daniel Craig was getting it.
Unless you’re like Sam Neill and just happened to “extreme reluctance,” when reading for 007, I can’t see a person not at least trying to get cast as the next James Bond. If I knew I even had a shot at getting into the conversation, I’d leave my laptop, rent a tuxedo and try not to slip into an impression of the various men who’ve played Bond – just for the story!
However, as was similarly the case with Michael Fassbender’s James Bond tryout, Antony Starr could see the writing was on the wall and that he wouldn’t be cast. As Starr continued to tell the story behind the audition in that recently resurfaced tape, the Without a Paddle star proved that he knew exactly what he was getting himself into at the time:
They were just dragnetting the globe, and I was just one of the little minnows somewhere in there that got caught in the net. It was a bit surreal. It came out of the blue, and I sort of went in and did that reading. It’s not very good, but it’s reflective of where I was at.
Of course, Starr eventually became a pop culture icon due to his role on The Boys (which is streamable with a Prime Video subscription). It is, however, tempting to consider what his Commander Bond might have been like. As was the case with Henry Cavill’s 007 audition reel, and as Starr himself admitted, you can indeed get a sense of where he was as an actor at that point in his career via the video. Check it out:
I think that if the James Bond franchise had proceeded with an actor similar to Pierce Brosnan, Antony Starr could have been a sterling candidate. His lethal rage as Homelander, mixed with the good-natured attitude tell me that he would’ve struck a fine balance between Sean Connery and Roger Moore. That, of course, wasn’t what Casino Royale was looking for.
Starr admittedly didn’t give a perfect reading of the Goldeneye scene provided to him, but he certainly showed promise. Then again, it’s easy to say that when looking at where Starr’s career is today. On that note, you can see him alongside Viola Davis when in the thriller G20 when it hits Prime Video on April 10th.