No Time To Die star Rami Malek on being a Bond bad guy and how he learned to lighten up

A Bond movie is only as good as its villain which is why Rami Malek did his part to ensure that Daniel Craig left the role on a high.

Rami Malek says he tried not to think too hard about the six decades of movie history that comes with playing a Bond villain.

His scar-faced terrorist and poison merchant Lyutsifer Safin in No Time To Die, the 25th official film in the long-running spy thriller franchise, joins an elite club that dates back to 1962 with Joseph Wiseman’s metal-handed Dr No and has included luminaries such as Christopher Walken, Sean Bean and Christopher Lee, as well as Oscar-winners Christoph Waltz and Javier Bardem.

“Once you start to focus on the weight and tradition and the history of it, you might lose a little bit of your confidence,” muses Malek via Zoom call from New York, fresh from a stint hosting long-running US comedy institution Saturday Night Live.

“And I think confidence is key when you are playing any character, but especially a villain.”

What he did want to do, however, was provide a worthy adversary for Daniel Craig’s fifth and final mission as the British spy 007 with the licence to kill.

In his 16-year tenure as James Bond, Craig has been applauded for giving Ian Fleming’s character a depth and gravitas that had eluded some of his predecessors, mixing his brutal, ruthless streak with an air of vulnerability.

Rami Malek (as Lyutsifer Safin) and director Cary Joji Fukunaga on the set of No Time to Die. Picture: Nicola Dove/DANJAQ, LLC & MGM.

There’s a rule of thumb that says a Bond movie is only as good as its villain and Malek wanted to do his part to ensure that Craig would leave the role on a high.

“I didn’t want to be some sort of cackling megalomaniac with this guy because I thought it’s a very serious moment for Daniel in this film and I wanted to meet him with the same level of seriousness,” says Malek, who won the 2019 Best Actor Oscar as Freddie Mercury in the Queen biopic, Bohemian Rhapsody.

“Yes, you want to create a charismatic villain and you want him to be charming and have a nice quip here and there but also come with a level of deathly seriousness that is unable to be unappreciated. It demands respect.”

Malek says that the vengeance-fuelled Safin sees himself as “far more capable than Bond” and is a character capable of great cruelty and chaos in his quest for what he believes is justice.

To play the complicated Queen frontman, Malek drew on his own upbringing as a first-generation immigrant who harboured artistic ambitions that weren’t immediately understood by his family.

He’d also found elements of himself in his other well-known characters, such as his mentally unstable hacker Elliot Alderson in Mr Robot (for which he won an Emmy) and Snafu Shelton in the Australia-shot World War II drama The Pacific.

But for Safin, Malek took “a completely different approach” to anything he’d tried before.

Rami Malek as scarfaced terrorist Safin in No Time To Die. Picture: Nicola Dove/DANJAQ, LLC & MGM.

“I didn’t know that I wanted to empathise or sympathise with him,” he says.

“He can so easily remove himself from sympathy and empathy in order to carry out his will and I found that psychologically very interesting.

“What drives someone to such heinous brutality and to simultaneously be unaffected by that type of malevolence? There are aspects of simply feeling extraordinarily distant from one another – myself and the character – that I found unique.”

Malek says he had a ball working with Craig (“what a great bloke – as you might say”) recounting the time the pair introduced an early screening of No Time To Die in Los Angeles – and then stuck around to watch the opening scenes with the audience.

Thanks to the Covid-19 pandemic, the release of the movie was pushed back several times as long-time producers Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson held firm in their belief that it deserved to be seen on the biggest screen possible.

Their patience and faith has been rewarded – so far No Time To Die has made more than $900m at the global box office and is the fifth-highest grossing film of the year to date.

Michael G. Wilson, Daniel Craig, Barbara Broccoli, and Rami Malek at the Hollywood Walk of Fame star ceremony for Daniel Craig in Hollywood. Picture: Rich Fury/Getty

“Daniel and I sat in the aisle in this theatre and watched the beginning on IMAX and I have to say I was just blown away,” he says.

“There was a moment where I was kind of edging my way in because I couldn’t see part of the screen … but sweetly, Daniel grabs me by the arm and pulls me in to make sure I had a great vantage point. And that’s the kind of guy he is.”

Having made a career playing darker characters to date, Malek, 40, decided his recent milestone birthday was a good opportunity to pause and reflect on his good fortune.

His wacky appearance on SNL – gatecrashed by Craig – was a case in point.

“There was this feeling of not taking myself so seriously that washed over me,” he says.

“I wish it had happened a little bit earlier, but I am grateful that it showed up the moment that it did and I figured what better time … to take the piss out of myself on SNL? It was an extraordinary experience.

“I’m often pinching myself saying, ‘this is an extraordinary ride’ and I am not taking any of it for granted.”

No Time To Die opens in cinemas on Thursday

Javier Bardem as Raoul Silva, in Skyfall one of the finest arch-enemies in the 50-year history of Bond films. Picture: AP Photo/Sony Pictures, Francois Duhamel

THE BEST BOND VILLAINS

1. AURIC GOLDFINGER

Greedy, ruthless, body-painting tyrant (memorably played by German actor Gert Frobe) who even cheats at golf. Also responsible for one of the finest lines in Bond history.

Bond: “Do you expect me to talk?”

Goldfinger: “No, Mr Bond, I expect you to die!”

Gert Frobe as Auric Goldfinger

Donald Pleasance as Ernst Blofeld.

2. ERNST STAVRO BLOFELD

So evil he appeared in eight movies played most memorably by Donald Pleasence, Charles Gray, Telly Savalas and rebooted by Oscar-winner Christoph Waltz in Spectre and again in No Time To Die. His cat-stroking fiendishness was the inspiration for Dr Evil in the Austin Powers movies.

3. RAOUL SILVA

Oscar-winner Javier Bardem brought a creepy malevolence to Skyfall’s main villain, an MI6 agent turned cyberterrorist taking revenge on his former boss, Judi Dench’s M. His opening monologue about rats turning on each other is one of the greatest moments in any Bond film.

4. ALEC TREVALYN

Initially Bond’s comrade in arms, Agent 006, who fakes his death and turns very nasty in GoldenEye. Played with a dangerous charm by Sean Bean – who would later break hearts as the noble and doomed Ned Stark in Game of Thrones – he has all of his foe’s training, but none of the scruples.

Richard Kiel, as Jaws, gets the drop on Roger Moore’s James Bond.

5. JAWS

The 2.18m tall Richard Kiel was the perfect choice to play the metal-toothed henchman with a penchant for biting his victims’ jugulars. He first appeared trying to take a chunk out of Roger Moore in The Spy Who Loved Me, but almost gets booted off the list for turning good in Moonraker.