James Bond movies may have received a Trinny & Susannah-style makeover with Casino Royale, but some things will always remain the same. 007 needs a bad guy – and that bad guy will need a henchman.
We already know that the as-yet untitled Bond 22, which starts filming next month with Marc Forster at the helm, has brought Mathieu Almaric on board as the villain – and today CommanderBond.net is reporting that Swiss actor Anatole Taubmann has been cast as one of his henchmen.
Taubmann, who played Crematory Technician in the vastly under-rated Equilibrium and is therefore a man deserving of your respect, apparently revealed the news on a Swiss TV show, saying things like, ‘James Bond - that’s like playing the Champions League. For a European actor, this is like a gold ticket. There’s nothing better. I’m very happy.’
Taubmann revealed little else about the role, but he would say that it involved a lot of training, and that it’s a very action and dialogue heavy role, which indicates that it’s a long way from the sort of anonymous henchman part that Bond (and Nigel Powers) used to deal with so adroitly.
Adding Taubmann to Almaric is so far giving Bond 22’s villains a distinctly Euro-flavour, perfectly in keeping with the notion that they might belong to the same organisation as Mr. White from Casino Royale – an organisation we believe Bond may be trying to take down. And an organisation that, in our wildest fanboy dreams, may be known by an acronym and which may lead to one Ernst Stavros Blofeld…
Anyway, a website can dream. For more details on Taubmann’s (as yet unconfirmed) casting, go to CommanderBond.net