Daniel Craig’s iconic, homoerotic James Bond scene was almost cut by prudish executives
The homoerotic scene in Skyfall sees James Bond and Raoul Silva have a steamy encounter. (YouTube/ James Bond 007)
Studio executives tried to cut James Bond’s famously homoerotic Skyfall scene, according to producer Barbara Broccoli.
In the 2012 film, 007 fans were given a hint that the world’s most famous spy, this time played by Daniel Craig, might be not be as straight as everyone thought.
In one scene, Bond has been captured by villain, former MI6 agent and cyberterrorist Raoul Silva, played by Javier Bardem, and has been tied to a chair.
After a long anecdote about rat cannibalism and revealing some hard truths about M, Silva takes a seat opposite Bond and begins to unbutton his shirt and stroke his neck and chest, before moving down to his thighs.
Silva says: “You’re trying to remember your training now… well, there’s a first time for everything.”
Surprising the villain, Bond responds: “What makes you think this is my first time?”
Discussing the scene in the new Apple TV+ documentary Being Bond, Broccoli revealed that it was almost left out, as executives were presumably worried about straying from Bond’s aggressively heterosexual, womanising image.
She said: “We were told to cut that line by the studio and we said, ‘No, no, no.’
“And I remember on the night of the premiere, that line, just the whole place erupted, and I remember looking at the studio executive and going: ‘See? Told you.'”
Netflix has just dropped a series that will meet all of your queer spy needs, with a ‘gay James Bond’ cartoon
On 2 September, Netflix dropped the funny, animated queer spy series Q-Force, which follows Steve Maryweather – also known as Agent Mary.
Maryweather comes out as gay during a speech at his graduation from the American Intelligence Agency (AIA), and is subsequently demoted by the agency.
He later joins forces with a misfit squad of LGBT+ spies to fight back at the agency that underestimated them.
Creator Gabe Liedman told Entertainment Tonight that he was inspired to create the series by the idea of a “gay James Bond”. He described how Maryweather has “all the trappings of James Bond”, but he is not taken seriously by his spy agency because of his sexual orientation.
“That felt like this really funny set up for an action-comedy about this incredibly skilled person just bumping up against a wall over and over again,” Leidman said.
