Judi Dench played M in the James Bond films for two decades – but it was Tomorrow Never Dies that gave her the most problems.
Judi Dench’s memoir is now out, and you can find it here. Within its pages, as per an extract that popped up at Variety, she discusses her time working in the world of James Bond.
From 1995’s GoldenEye onwards, she assumed the role of M, the boss of 007, with both Pierce Brosnan and Daniel Craig reporting in to her by the time her tenure was complete. And she clearly enjoyed it, singling out the family atmosphere generated by Barbara Broccoli and Michael G Wilson on the set of the movies.
One of the films, though, she admits was far more difficult to make: 1997’s Tomorrow Never Dies.
This was, of course, Pierce Brosnan’s second outing as Bond, turned around two years after GoldenEye. It was notably a hurried production, and she admits “I found my time on Tomorrow Never Dies more challenging – too many rewrites. Making a film is nerve-racking enough – at least it is for me – and to be presented with a load of rewrites last minute is very destabilizing: there are whole new chunks of information to take in – not to mention new lines to learn – that you haven’t had the time to examine.”
See also: Tomorrow Never Dies – a James Bond film ahead of its time?
She recalled that “every day we’d be presented with new scenes. On one occasion I arrived home at 10 o’clock at night only to be greeted by a motorcycle courier with a dozen new pages to be learnt before my pick-up at five a.m. the following morning. I mean, when the hell would I have a chance to learn all that?”
She wasn’t pinning the blame on director Roger Spottiswoode though, noting that “it could be to do with schedules and deadlines”, yet also added “there seemed to be a general air of chaos.”
It didn’t stop the film becoming a notable box office hit though, even when it found itself in direct box office competition with Titanic at the time of its release. Tomorrow Never Dies was one of the few movies not to be swept aside by Cameron’s juggernaut – although for Dench, it didn’t seem to leave too many fond memories behind.
Dench, incidentally, has also been reflected on the piece of cinema that is Cats. You can read more on that here.