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So how did Madsen get roped into the Bond role? ‘Originally they asked me to play a guy that gets killed by a death ray from space. I said no, because I wanted to be part of the franchise. I very much wanted to work in a Bond picture. Pierce is a very good friend of mine – our kids play together, for God’s sakes! But I really didn’t want to be in it as some glorified extra who gets killed.

‘So the whole thing went away for a while. Then Lee Tamahori gave me a call and said, ‘Do you still fancy being in the Bond picture? Well there’s another part we have. It’s not a big role but it’s the head of the NSA, which is a military commander type of a guy.’ It wasn’t really in the script yet, so I flew over here blindly and I went over to take a meeting with Barbara Broccoli and Michael Wilson over at Pinewood and they basically described to me the character and what they thought I could do.’

The best thing, for Madsen about the new character, was his longevity. ‘They could introduce me as a recurring character, so I’d come back in Bond 21 and 22 and then they said if I got tired of it, they’d assassinate me and Bond could use my death as a vengeful reason to do something (laughs).’

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This means that Michael Madsen will appear in Bond 22 as well. In an early interview he said that he was recurring in Bond 21. Speculations were saying that Madsen would play the villain in Bond 21. So this isn’t right. Afterall, it seems that Damian Falco will become a good friend of Bond. Michael Madsen as a reccuring actor seems to be a very good idea. Perhaps he’ll become a kind of Felix Leiter-type.

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So he’s good friends with Bond? ‘The way it happens in the film is that initially I don’t trust him. I’m like the American M. Like Judi Dench sends out Bond, I send out Halle Berry. By the end of the movie I realise that he’s saved the world from nuclear armageddon, or whatever it is…so we’ve evolved. So now I suppose in the next Bond picture, we’ll probably start out in more collusion with each other.’

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Now we have the final confirmation: Halle Berry is going to play a NSA agent. She’s the second agent in that movie beyond Rosamund Pike, who will play MI6 agent Miranda Frost. And we know, one of them will be a traitor. Speculations claimed that Damian Falco would be the traitor. But I can’t imagine him as a traitor after that interview.

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Clearly this is an ending Madsen’s family approves of. ‘I’ve got four boys, they think it’s pretty cool. And I’m glad I don’t get bumped off – you can imagine I’d have to live with; ‘Dad, why did you get killed. Why did James Bond kill you. I don’t want to live with that for the next 20 years so it’s good that my character survives.’ And he gets to come back to Britain again and again and again.

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