Rami Malek Hints at Why his No Time To Die Villain Might be Bond’s Toughest Foe

With No Time to Die a little more than a month away, Daniel Craig’s final turn as James Bond is just about upon us. The 25th installment of this venerable franchise has the makings of something truly special. Yes, it’s likely the longest Bond film in history. Yes, there will be a metric ton of action. And yes, the cast is, per usual, sensational. We’ve got the return of key players in Bond’s life include Madeleine Swann (Léa Seydoux), CIA agent Felix Leiter (Jeffrey Wright), and Bond’s previously most daunting foe, Blofeld (Christoph Waltz).

Yet we all know that while Bond is the main attraction, the Bond villain is the driving force. To that end, co-writer and director Cary Joji Fukunaga has promised us that the villain Bond faces will be “smarter and stronger than Spectre.” We know that Bond’s main antagonist will be Rami Malek’s Safin, and we now know that Malek and Fukunaga talked for a long time about how to make this particular villain worthy of Craig’s last stand as Bond.

Thanks to an interview Malek gave to Fandango All Access, alongside Fukunaga and cast members Lashana Lynch (she plays the new double O agent Nomi), Seydoux, Wright, and Craig himself—Malek revealed how Safin would have a certain quality that makes the best villains; the belief that what they’re doing is good for humanity:

“There’s a quality about Safin. He has a certain philosophy on how he can make the world a better place that could benefit everyone, including James Bond himself. Some would call him malicious and ruthless, but I don’t think he sees his actions that way at all. If anything his ruthlessness is a by-product of a ruthlessness he might have had in his own life at some point.”

How he could make the world a better place for everyone, including James Bond himself? Now that’s an intriguing premise. The bad guy who believes he’s a good guy is both rooted in historical fact (the monsters of history rarely believe in anything as ferociously as they do the rightness of their own cause) and in great cinema that pits good versus evil. It’s been reported previously that Malek was adamant about Safin being motivated by something other than religious belief; the notion that he himself is the victim of trauma, and he believes he’s just trying to do what’s right for the world, makes him a potentially more difficult foil for Bond than even the likes of Blofeld.

We’ll know soon enough just how tough Malek’s Safin will be. No Time To Die ends Daniel Craig’s era as Bond on April 10.

You can watch the full Fandango All Access interview here:

Featured image: Safin (Rami Malek) in NO TIME TO DIE,  a DANJAQ and Metro Goldwyn Mayer Pictures film. Credit: Nicola Dove © 2019 DANJAQ, LLC AND MGM.