In the early phases of what we’ve come to know as No Time To Die, the interest in casting Academy Award winner Rami Malek as the film’s villain was pretty heated. What looked like a pipe dream eventually became an example of persistence paying off, as Malek was eventually won over by the film’s promise. Something that, as we’ve now discovered, may have come from the actor getting to work on the story before he was even confirmed as part of the cast.
During a recent interview, Rami Malek and several other members of the No Time To Die company sat down to discuss some of the intricacies of the 25th James Bond movie. In that conversation, Malek revealed this telling detail about how Safin was eventually developed:
Cary and I spent quite a long time working on it beforehand. It feels like almost a year ago we started talking about this character, before I even had a chance to read the script, long before, we were coming up with ideas.
The time frame of almost a year ago would put Rami Malek’s involvement with his character’s background square between the period where he was being courted for No Time To Die and his eventual confirmation as part of the cast. For those of you keeping score, that huge announcement was part of the big kick off event in Jamaica, in celebration of principal photography starting on the film last April.
As if this discussion wasn’t informative enough, Fandango All Access managed to get a little more information about what sort of work Rami Malek put into his No Time To Die baddie. Specifically, the following personality traits:
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.
While there were previous stories told about how Rami Malek put his own stamp on Safin, particularly in his insistence on not playing a religiously motivated terrorist, it sounds like there was a lot more work put into No Time To Die’s nefarious presence.
Perhaps the most exciting aspect of Rami Malek’s Safin is the fact that, in his own words, his plot could benefit 007 himself. There’s no concrete evidence as to what he’s doing, or how that plot will tie into the secret that Lea Seydoux’s Madeleine Swann is hiding from the world.
However, if the cracks about Bond’s age and Safin’s ominous promise of his abilities surpassing the boundaries of typical humanity are on the same page, there might be some sort of genetic enhancement/longevity at play. We don’t know for sure, but Rami Malek is one of the few people that does, and it seems that he’s been hiding it for much longer than we thought.
It won’t be long until the truth is revealed, as No Time To Die closes the era of Daniel Craig’s James Bond on April 10.
