By Over the last few years Cillian Murphy's chances of being the next James Bond have wavered somewhere between 'dark horse' and 'idle fanboy daydream', fuelled in part by the menace and violence he's showed as Tommy Shelby on Peaky Blinders.
But we never really knew what Cillian himself thought about it until now - and it turns out he's all in favour of recasting the role for a woman.
"The thing about it is, if you say anything about Bond it becomes the headline, right?" Murphy observed while chatting to The Guardian on the subject. Absolutely correct. Do go on, Cillian.
"There's two things I’ll say about that," Murphy said. "Firstly, there’s a whole other industry which is completely separate from the film side of things, and that's the bookies. The second thing I'd say is that I think it should be a woman, which rules me out."
Intriguing. Obviously he's right that the bookmakers' odds don't tell you much beyond who's on telly right now - remember when James Norton was the frontrunner when McMafia was on, and then Richard Madden overtook him when The Bodyguard blew up.
Murphy also seems a pretty private and measured guy and doesn't tend to just say things for effect, and his call for a woman to play Bond sounds very sincere. Whether it'll actually happen is another question - we know that Lashana Lynch will take up the 007 codename in Bond 25, most likely while Bond himself is kicking back in Jamaica, but whether that turns into a full-on handing of the torch remains to be seen.
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