Jeffrey Wright is a tremendously talented, and often overlooked, actor. Most recently he appeared in the Clooney-directed The Ides of March, which is currently playing TIFF. When he was chosen to play the character of Felix Leiter in Casino Royale, it seemed a perfect fit. He then reprised the role in Quantum of Solace. But news from TIFF, according to Comingsoon.net, is that 007 may have to go it alone in the next film. Wright told the website that has yet to receive a call from the studio to let him know whether Felix will turn up in Bond’s latest adventure. What does this mean?
Very little in fact. It would be easy to use this tidbit to initiate an onslaught of rumors. Is the character gone for good? Were the producers unhappy with Wright? The thing to remember about Felix Leiter is that he’s never been a consistent mainstay in James Bond cinema. Sure he’s turned up in ten films, but that’s out of a total of twenty-two existing entries. The character almost completely disappeared during the Roger Moore era, only showing up in Moore’s first Bond effort Live and Let Die. The character was then temporarily replaced during Brosnan’s reign as Bond by a dopey CIA good ol’ boy named Jack Wade played by Joe Don Baker who had ironically played the villain in the 1987 Timothy Dalton Bond film The Living Daylights. The character goes through cycles and sometimes Bond’s missions just don’t call for him.
Many people believed that the casting of an African-American actor to play a character who’d traditionally been white was incredibly bold. But Wright isn’t the first African-American to play the role; that honor belonging to Bernie Casey in 1983’s Never Say Never Again. So effectively, Wright is the first African-American to play Felix Leiter in a good Bond film. And he is very good in the role so I highly doubt that this is some kind of power play by the studio to expel him from the franchise.
The other thing to keep in mind here is that the new Bond film has not started shooting and has not even released a title yet. It’s set to hit theaters next November, which gives the filmmakers more than a year to work out any kinks within the script or, possibly, decide they need a scene involving Leiter. The clandestine nature of his character requires him to make sudden appearances and fast getaways, which makes the character easy to insert into any script. Just because they don’t need him now, doesn’t mean they can’t call him Leiter later.
