Daniel Craig On The Tonight Show

This past Friday, Daniel Craig made his first appearance on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno to promote his upcoming return as James Bond in Quantum of Solace.

Following up a brief gag involving Leno and the Aston Martin DBS, Craig made his appearance on the show, unfortunately still stuck with the sling on his right arm. Asked immediately about what happened, Craig said: ‘I got injured, you know. I’ve had shoulder reconstruction so I’ve got six screws, though I promised my surgeon I’d say seven, that dissolve.’

‘It’s OK. First off, they kind of wrap you up and when you sleep, that’s uncomfortable, but I’m in the rehabilitation stage now and that’s looking good.’

When Leno followed this up with the plastic surgery rumours that have been picked up by the media, Craig responded: ‘I got kicked in the face. There’s a fight sequence at the end where I’m fighting with the bad guy and I just got a stray shoe, so I went to see a plastic surgeon and he put eight little stitches in there–and then jokingly–I asked him to do the rest of my face but he didn’t have time.’

‘There’s nothing scary about them,’ said Craig in response to Leno’s question regarding several dangerous stunts in Quantum of Solace, ‘at the beginning of the film there’s a rooftop chase and we rehearse and rehearse and rehearse and get those, you know, as perfect as we can in the studio. There’s one sequence where I jump out of a window on to the top of a bus and we did that in the studio and it’s kind of easy in the studio, you know, it’s warm, it’s nice, there’s nice people around you, the bus is rubber and everything’s kind of pretend. Then you jump out of the window and we’re in Siena filming this and I’m standing at the window and there’s a camera crew, there’s six cameras and there’s a crowd of people who have turned up to watch because this is a Bond movie being shot. I’m standing there thinking “Oh God, I’ve got to get this right!” And there’s a bus coming! And it’s really disconcerting to jump out of a window onto an oncoming bus. I can’t quite get over it.’

When asked about how he actually learned he had landed the role of 007 in Casino Royale, Craig said: ‘I was in Baltimore, in Whole Foods supermarket–upon hearing the audience’s resulting laughter, Craig adds:–‘I wish it was a better story. I was literally just doing some grocery shopping because I was working there and the phone went and Barbara Broccoli was on the phone and she went “Over to you, kiddo”. And that was it. I put down the groceries, went into the liquer store, bought a bottle of Vodka, and, um, got smashed.’

Asked if he ever had dreamt of being Bond, Craig said: ‘As a kid I dreamed of being lots of superheroes, but when I became an actor it was the last thing I had ever imagined being. It was completely off my radar. So I mean, getting the call to come in and see the producers was very flattering but I thought that this was a nice conversation and it would all be over and we’ll move on. And here we are.’

As with seemingly every interview centered around the 22nd James Bond film, the title itself came up as a topic for discussion. ‘OK, The whole premise of the last movie was that Bond fell in love and he had his heart broken and he was betrayed. Ian Fleming wrote this short story about the one moment in a relationship when it’s all over and there’s nothing left and you no longer have that tiny piece of something that makes it work. That’s the quantum of solace. And so, that’s what Bond is looking for in this movie. He’s looking for his quantum of solace. And we also tie it in with the bad guys.’

Visit NBC.com to watch the entire Daniel Craig interview.

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