Has The Back-Up Bond Girl Been Hired?

Here’s how Bond movie news tends to go: film is announced, start dates are scheduled, Daniel Craig heads to the gym, then EVERY agent in the industry starts throwing their hot female clients’ names around as contenders for the latest Bond Girl. Eventually, two of those casting announcements turn out to be true.

So your guess is as good as mine as to what the following bit of news falls under. An anonymous source has contacted Badass Digest with word of one Gemma Chan, a gorgeous British actress known primarily for winning the UK version of Project Runway and a recurring role in the fourth season of The Secret Diary of a Call Girl, landing one of the ladyparts in the new Bond flick. The source says, “according to her, and her agent (that’s an important note - see above. -pn), she has been cast in Bond 23 as one of the Bond Girls.”

As I mentioned, this is often just agent posturing, which almost always results in canceling out their clients as possibilities. One story in 2007 said a gal named Mayrin Villanueva was officially cast in Quantum of Solace, back when it was still called Bond 22. Never heard a peep about her again. Hard to say for sure, but Gemma Chan (two Gemmas in a row!) certainly looks like a Bond Girl, has a little more of a CV to lend credibility to the story, and would easlily get my vote as a secondary Bond Girl (you know, the one who ends up banged and body-bagged, a fine tradition Craig has kept up thus far*).

So, kind of weird to hear myself suggest that this lovely young lady would be a good one to murder, but there it is. As it’s doubtful she’s the primary female lead, the second-stringers end up dead. It’s tradition! Now, on to the months-long exercise of guessing the title. I’m leaning toward Property of a Lady, as that’s one of maybe three Fleming titles not used yet.

*Though he technically didn’t seal the deal with Solange, the Backup Bond Girl in Casino Royale, she was part of a larger plan to completely decimate Dimitrios, a lower-rung baddie: 007 foils the dude’s terrorist plan, wins the guy’s car in a poker game, steals his wife, brings her to the brink of ecstasy, leaves her ass to fly to Miami and kill her husband, foils Dimitrios’ OTHER terrorist plan, then gets his wife killed. ICE COLD.