Even James Bond Didn’t Make Daniel Craig Do 1 Difficult Thing Both ‘Queer’ and ‘Knives Out’ Pushed Him For

English actor Daniel Craig is widely known for playing fictional secret agent James Bond in five installments, for which he has been highly lauded. Craig has also been a part of the Knives Out film series, in which he portrays Detective Benoit Blanc and has received two Golden Globe nominations. The actor is soon going to reprise his character for the third installment, Wake Up Dead Man.

One of the most talked-about movies in recent times is Daniel Craig’s recent release, Queer, which is an adaptation of William S. Burroughs’ novel Queer. The film is directed by Luca Guaganino and stars Drew Starkey opposite Craig. Upon release and world premiere at the 81st Venice International Film Festival, Craig’s performance was highly appreciated. The actor recently shared one thing he had to do for Queer and Knives Out, which he didn’t for James Bond.

Daniel Craig talks about changing accents for Knives Out and Queer

In his appearance to promote his recently released movie, Queer on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert, actor Daniel Craig was complimented by the host for his American accent. Colbert asked Craig about how he trains his voice for the accents, to which the actor said,

Just pick some voices. He [William Lee from Queer] is Midwest, so I just picked a few famous people and listened to them. Maybe Robert Altman was the key one because he is from the area.

Craig explained that he did not want to mimic the author William S. Burroughs when playing Lee because he is an avatar of the author but not him. Queer is not the first movie where Craig had to change accents, in Knives Out, he did a Southern accent, and even though fans loved his Southern accent, the actor was terrified to embrace it.

During an appearance on the Happy Sad Confused podcast, he recalled that Jamie Lee Curtis was standing before him, and the rest of the cast encouraged him to speak in a Southern accent. He also shared why he was terrified when filming the sequel.

I was really nervous when we came back to this one that I’d be doing an impression of that. And I was like, ‘Oh god, that would just be terrible, and it will be like a pastiche of what I’ve done.

Earlier in an interview with Empire, the actor mentioned that he had spent four months relearning the Blanc accent before the filming of Glass Onion. The actor noted he wanted to make his voice sound as grounded and anchored in reality as possible. According to CNN, the dialect coach Sarah Shepherd, who worked on Spectre, shared that Daniel Craig speaks in Received Pronunciation, also known as Queen’s English.

She added that it’s one of the many distinct British dialects. Shepherd noted that Craig is well-spoken and well-educated; he’s soft on his consonants. The actor did not change his accent for any of the James Bond movies but spoke in very Queen’s English.

Luca Guadagnino on why he picked Daniel Craig for Queer

Filmmaker Luca Guadagnino recently spoke to IndieWire, where he revealed that he was impressed with Craig’s performance over the years in the James Bond films. He said when Craig started to do Bond, he found in him the embodiment of an icon and legend in a way that was not submissive to the legend but was confronting it.

The filmmaker added that very few actors and stars can call themselves actors, and very few can reclaim the power of going above the icons they play, and Craig is one of them. He revealed that when he asked the actor about being a part of Queer, he immediately said yes, which goes on to say that cinema is the place for miracles and that people cannot be judged.

Guadagnino also shared that he has been Craig’s fan since he saw Love Is the Devil, in which the actor plays George Dyer. The director mentioned that in that movie both he and Derek Jacobi were incredible. Upon talking about the adaptation, Guadagnino said that for him it’s very cinematic because it gives him an opportunity to use cinema for what it is, which is a story of ghosts.

According to THR, in the final act of Queer, the romance between the two concludes in a way that tends to avoid betraying the premise and giving the novella’s author a fitting tribute. The filmmaker added that they were looking for clues in the book and that they wanted to have the tone of the author to have the humor.

He concluded that they knew that everything was a real, deep love story about two people not in sync more often than they were in sync. Daniel Craig and Drew Starkey’s performance has been appreciated by the critics and the audience in Queer.

Queer is playing in cinemas.