“You always have to have your eyes open in case you have to replace somebody, which has happened many many times. Having fought the battle for Daniel, felt she couldn’t really push it any further,” she continues.

There was an actor very much in mind who I very much wanted but in the end, the studio didn’t want. “Mads Mikkelsen was not in at all until the person who we originally wanted didn’t go.

McWilliams has cast eleven Bond films, from the new No Time to Die back to 1981’s For Your Eyes Only. “Some people aren’t cast even after we start shooting,” Casino Royale casting director Debbie McWilliams told Entertainment Weekly in a recent interview. By pure luck, Mikkelsen happened to be in town at the time. But when that actor dropped out, producers scrambled to find a quick replacement. But Mikkelsen wasn’t intended to take the role: as the name indicates, Le Chiffre was intended to be played by a French actor (though that didn’t stop Peter Lorre and Orson Welles from taking on the same role in previous non-canonical adaptations).Ĭasino Royale went into production in Prague with a French actor cast as the film’s villain.

Mikkelsen would shoot to stardom after playing Le Chiffre, later playing Hannibal Lector and appearing in both the Marvel ( Doctor Strange) and Star Wars ( Rogue One) franchises. He was played by Mads Mikkelsen, an acclaimed Danish actor who had only appeared in one other English-language production at the time, a supporting role in 2004’s King Arthur. Le Chiffre, the primary antagonist of Casino Royale and the most memorable Bond villain of the Daniel Craig era, competed against 007 during the poker scenes shot in Karlovy Vary.

But some of the most memorable scenes in the movie were shot in Karlovy Vary the titular casino was set in Montenegro, but played by the Czech spa city’s famed Grandhotel Pupp, which also happened to inspire Wes Anderson’s Grand Budapest Hotel. Casino Royale was largely filmed in the Czech Republic during 2005, with Prague playing itself as well as filling in for other locales, including Miami.

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