HAVING officially left behind the iconic role of James Bond in last year’s No Time to Die – his fifth stint in the role – Daniel Craig is letting loose.
IN a new ad campaign for Belvedere vodka, by writer-director-actor Taika Waititi, who’s known for having a bit of a playful persona, the 54-year-old Craig dances up a storm – leaving more than a few people all hot and bothered.
The award-winning actor, who will next be seen in Netflix’s Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery, shows off the muscular physique he showed off plenty of times as 007.
Playing a version of himself in the commercial, Craig starts off in an all-white suit, looking out over Paris' Pont Neuf bridge before turning to the camera and smirking. He then struts down the street, dancing into the lobby of the Cheval Blanc Paris hotel, as an upbeat song by Rita Ora and Giggs plays.
In a meta twist, once Craig enters his lavish hotel room and takes a sip of Belvedere Vodka, Waititi himself steps into the commercial by calling cut.
"Let's go again, just be yourself," Waititi says to Craig, who smiles at the camera, takes another sip of the vodka before the commercial ends.
Many users have commented on similarities between this commercial and the iconic music video to Fatboy Slim's Weapon Of Choice from 2001, which was directed by Spike Jonze and starred Christopher Walken in a legendary performance. It won the 2002 Grammy for best music video.
As Bond, Craig was famously a connoisseur of the vodka martini (shaken not stirred), but a reference to that was deemed too obvious by Waititi.
"It felt almost lazy to go like, 'Daniel, can you hold a martini?'" Waititi told GQ on November 9. "I was happy to not even have to entertain that very long."
"There was sort of the fun of playing with [what] people expect, like 'Oh, we’re going to make some high-class thing in Paris and it's in black and white, very pretentious, like the beginning of a French noir film' or something," he added.
Waititi, who most recently wrote, directed and co-starred in Thor: Love and Thunder, initially wasn’t sure if Craig could dance at all.
"It was just about having fun with the form, and making sure that we never really took any of it too seriously," he explained. "It’s just nice to do something where it’s like, 'Oh, is this the real Daniel? Maybe this is a different version of Daniel than we've ever seen?'"
"He just was great and he wasn’t cynical about it, and he wasn’t reticent. He just leaned straight in," Waititi added. – The Vibes, November 15, 2022
