Saoirse Ronan Wants to Go Full Villain in James Bond: “I Want to Go Dark”
Saoirse Ronan is ready to make life absolutely miserable for James Bond.
Ronan has spent much of her career playing complicated characters we ultimately want to see succeed, but she’s ready to leave all that sympathy behind and embrace something considerably nastier. In fact, she already has a specific target in mind: she wants to play a James Bond villain.
The Irish actress has built an incredible filmography since breaking out as a child performer, with memorable roles in Lady Bird, Little Women, The Outrun, and See How They Run. Ronan has proved she has a knack for making flawed characters easy to invest in.
Now she wants to see what happens when audiences aren’t supposed to root for her. “I want to go dark,” Ronan told Empire.
She’s apparently very serious about taking that darkness into the world of 007. “I said that I wanted to be a Bond villain and I’m dead serious.
“I think it would be really interesting, having a young female villain. Especially for girls and women, to see someone who can just take all that pent-up anger and direct it somewhere, there’s something interesting in that dramatically. So I would love to do more of that.”
A young female Bond villain played by Ronan could be a lot of fun, particularly if the character gave her something more substantial to work with than the usual world domination scheme.
Ronan is so good at finding the humanity, frustration, humor, and messiness inside her characters that watching her channel those abilities into someone genuinely dangerous could make for a very different kind of antagonist.
She’s already dipping into darker territory with her latest film, Bad Apples. Ronan plays Maria, a teacher dealing with an incredibly disruptive student.
The situation gets seriously twisted when Maria ends up holding the kid captive in her basement. With the problem student removed from class, things at school suddenly start going remarkably well.
It’s a dark premise, but Ronan doesn’t see Maria as a straightforward monster. She said: “The whole point, and the reason why the writing is so clever, is that it’s gone past being black and white. I don’t know what I would do in that situation, but I certainly don’t feel like Maria is an out-and-out psychopath. I think she’s the nicest villain you could play.”
That’s still a few steps away from becoming the kind of person who straps James Bond to an elaborate death machine, but it sounds like Ronan is ready to keep moving in that direction.
I’ve always liked Ronan as an actress, and I’d like to see what she could do as a Bond villain. She has the range to play someone intelligent and charismatic while still making the character feel unpredictable and dangerous.
Instead of simply casting her as an obvious psychopath, it would be much more interesting to give her a villain with understandable motivations who gradually reveals just how ruthless she really is.
I’ve always been a fan of female Bond villains. The franchise has had some memorable women on the wrong side of 007 over the years, and Ronan could bring a completely different flavor to that tradition. Give her a great character, a sharp script, and permission to get mean, and she could have a blast with it.
As the next era of James Bond continues to take shape, hopefully somebody involved is paying attention. Ronan is dead serious about wanting the job, and I’m definitely interested in seeing her take a shot at it.