Change is a constant that’s kept the James Bond movies fresh and exciting for over six decades. That much is true from a top down perspective, as changing the actors playing the main characters in the film adaptations of Ian Fleming’s landmark books is something we see happen periodically.
But on a much more intimate level, the stories for an individual entry, like director Lee Tamahori’s Die Another Day, can be quite drastic. A recent interview with the man himself confirmed as much, as he spoke of massive script changes, a pretty huge cameo that almost happened, and the reasons behind both alterations during production.
Michelle Yeoh’s Die Another Day Cameo Was Confirmed, But Didn’t Happen For One Big Reason
As I spoke with Mr. Tamahori during his press day for the 2024 movie The Convert, I naturally wanted to steer part of our conversation towards his time on the 20th 007 adventure. One of the more infamous entries in the series at large, the swan song to Pierce Brosnan’s James Bond has been said to have intended on bringing Michelle Yeoh’s Wai Lin back to the fold.
Thanks to my talk with Lee Tamahori, the New Zealand filmmaker confirmed that this was indeed supposed to happen. But as he explained to CinemaBlend, there was a huge reason that it never took place:
So lots of modifications went on, but yes Michelle Yeoh was supposed to come back into the picture, and in a not substantial part, but for the Hong Kong sequence. And we went out to see her, we went out to have a meeting with her in Hong Kong, and she turned it down. She didn't wanna play a small part. … After Crouching Tiger [Hidden Dragon] and all that, she had moved on in stature.
Previously seen in 1997’s Tomorrow Never Dies, Colonel Wai Lin teamed up with Commander James Bond to disrupt the blossoming world war being stoked by media tycoon Elliot Carver (Jonathan Pryce). In true Bond fashion, both of our heroes survived, sealing their partnership with a kiss to end a film on.
In the proposed Die Another Day scene, Pierce Brosnan and Michelle Yeoh would have re-teamed for an alternate version of the sequence that saw 007 going rogue in his quest to thwart the villainous plot at hand. This scene appears in the final movie, in a sequence where Bond foils a Chinese intelligence plot to film him in a compromising position with a young masseuse (Rachel Grant).
Various resources, like Bond fan site MI6.co.uk, have indicated over the years that Yeoh was supposed to return in an earlier draft of Die Another Day, with special features on the Region 2 DVD cited as further evidence. However, much like Olga Kurylenko’s debunked Skyfall cameo, I wanted to get an official statement on whether or not this was indeed correct. Sure enough, Lee Tamahori was able to do just that.
With this information confirming reports that a James Bond side character that almost returned were true, The Convert director was also able to explain why this hadn’t come to pass. Continuing his story with CinemaBlend, Tamahori shared these further details:
So I think she thought it was just too small role for her at that time, but we tried. But it would've changed as well. We hadn't cast, we hadn't finished with the Jinx character at that stage, and we hadn't cast Halle. So it would've been good bringing Michelle into it, but didn't wanna overpower [the movie]. You didn't wanna overpower it with too many female characters. But yeah, I did a lot of restructuring.
So what do we know about Michelle Yeoh’s Die Another Day cameo? Well, based on what’s been peaced together in the past, we’d have seen 007 seeking Wai Lin’s help in tracking down Zao (Rick Yune). As the henchman to Gustav Graves (Toby Stephens), and the operative James Bond was swapped for in a prisoner exchange, it’s the first piece of the case to clear his name and save the world for the 20th time in 40 years.
Arriving at an upscale Hong Kong hotel, Bond was to meet up with Wai Lin and then get into an elevator fight with some North Korean assailants moving to take them both out. It makes total sense, as Yeoh’s action credentials were part of what brought her to the James Bond franchise in the first place, and Halle Berry’s Giacinta "Jinx" Johnson wasn’t cast just yet. So from the sound of things, there might have been a potential to expand this Tomorrow Never Dies cameo into a full-fledged Bond Girl return for the Chinese colonel.
Lee Tamahori admitted to some further changes to the Die Another Day script he helped shape, along with the James Bond in-house writing team of Neal Purvis and Robert Wade. Through that continuing story came another revealing set of details that highlighted quite a few more changes to the plot; albeit for some more unfortunate circumstances.
How 9/11 Led To Some Of Die Another Day’s Massive Script Changes
Die Another Day had the disadvantage of being the first Bond picture to be released after the terrorist attacks on September 11th. As the whole Hollywood landscape saw movies rewritten, edited or outright delayed due to those events, not even the 007 saga was immune to such alterations. Lee Tamahori shared as much with CinemaBlend thanks to these recollections of where he was on that very day:
They're very adaptable at EON Productions. The script I read was vastly different to the one we ended up shooting. It had [the] destruction of cities by the ‘death ray from space.’ And we watched 9/11 happen in EON’s production studios. We were still writing the screenplay when 9/11 happened. and we had to ditch the ending of the screenplay, because it was too familiar with the destruction of the Twin Towers.
Rather than seeing cities laid to waste a little over a year after the 9/11 attacks, Die Another Day shifted its big destruction sequences to the minefield between North and South Korea for its grand finale. And yes, that “death ray from space” is clearly the Icarus, a device that Tamahori would mention during his defense of a controversial Die Another Day gadget.
That same defense was based on the fact that EON Productions producer Michael G. Wilson loves to use real life Mil-Spec technologies to create slightly exaggerated gadgets and weapons of mass destruction. Clearly the director known for other Hollywood hits like Along Came A Spider and xXx: State of the Union was nothing but complimentary about his time with EON Productions, especially through additional comments such as these:
They are very welcoming. I mean, basically the Bond franchise, you can float any ridiculous idea you'd like, as long as it has merit to the narrative. They can get rejected or accepted, if the idea is accepted, then you follow it. Like [Neal] Purvis and [Robert] Wade and I, and the producers would be in a room, and we would just just whittle it down, Occam’s Razor something down to its bare essentials.
While we’ve seen cases of “creative differences” lead to surprises like Danny Boyle’s Bond 25 departure, even that instance seems to indicate that such a parting was on good terms. So even if not every director seems to gel with the EON Productions family like Lee Tamahori did, the collaborative nature of the company behind James Bond’s cinematic reign doesn’t seem to have dulled.
I, for one, would have loved to had seen Michelle Yeoh’s Wai Lin return in Die Another Day, but her reasons for passing on the role are totally valid. Not to mention, Halle Berry’s Jinx is one of the best Bond Women to have ever gone into the field with 007 himself; which of course led to its own missed opportunity with the canceled Jinx spinoff.
One could say this sort of alternate history is just par for the course when your movie franchise is over 60 years into its run, and with no signs of slowing. While we’re still waiting for Bond 26 to take shape, it’s pretty easy to return to Die Another Day, should you want to reappraise this campy James Bond adventure that seems to be winning over new fans over time.
But of course, don’t forget to catch Lee Tamahori’s latest film, The Convert, starring previous James Bond hopeful Guy Pearce, as that picture is currently being seen in theaters and on demand.
