Phoebe Waller-Bridge says she will make Bond girls feel like real women – we deserve them

The idea that swapping a man for a woman solves the Hollywood gender imbalance is farcical. But the addition of Waller-Bridge as a scriptwriter on Bond 25 is a stroke of genius

I’ve got a confession: I love James Bond. A 007 escapade is (almost) everything I’d want from a blockbuster action movie – perfect villains (Javier Bardem as Silva in Skyfall is as deliciously detestable as baddies come, and Jaws in Moonraker still terrifies me to this day); cheesy one-liners that stick it to macho cliches; edge-of-your-seat car chases and endlessly memorable costumes.

Which is why I was thrilled to hear that, following several writer changes and Daniel Craig himself stepping in to polish the script for the as-yet-unnamed flick, Phoebe Waller-Bridge has been called upon (at the behest of Craig) as script doctor to sharpen the newest Bond instalment and bring 007 well and truly into the 21^st century. Speaking on The Hollywood Reporter’s podcast this week, the Fleabag and Killing Eve creator said her role would be “mainly about making [the female characters] feel like real people”, before saying: “I think Daniel’s films have had really fantastic Bond girls, so it’s just keeping it up.”

Waller-Bridge’s comments are likely to be exposed as monumentally modest. If anyone can, it is she who will turn the Bond franchise from repetitive cliche into a relevant hit for the age, beyond just sharpening up female roles. Having Waller-Bridge polish the script for the latest Bond flick is so much better than a female 007 could ever have been. I’d be the first to argue for an increase in female representation on the silver screen (and I have done numerous times), but a female James Bond would be an insult – not to the film (no, Piers Morgan) – but to women.

A female Bond would have been an unmitigated disaster. Just think of the terrible all-female Ghostbusters that sought to balance the books through a tokenistic gender flip that surely set women in Hollywood back rather than propelling them forwards. I loved the all-female Oceans 8 but it was undermined by its remake status and left (largely male) critics cold. Jodie Whittaker as Dr Who was progress, but TV isn’t the main offender when it comes to a dearth of interesting female roles. In the past year alone we’ve seen Line of Duty, Killing Eve, and Bodyguard offer up complex women leads.

Bond is a distinctly male character. He’s a smooth-talking cheese ball alpha male misogynist who uses and discards women. To make him a woman would be to turn women into a commodity: a perpetuation of the myth that they aren’t worthy of original plots in their own right. No, women don’t need those sloppy seconds – a female Bond would probably live for pina coladas and wear tampons that shoot bullets. The idea that swapping a man for a woman solves the Hollywood gender imbalance is farcical. But the addition of Waller-Bridge as a scriptwriter on Bond 25 is a stroke of genius.

Absurdly – yet unsurprisingly – Waller-Bridge will become the second ever female scriptwriter to treat a Bond movie (following a Johanna Harwood credit for 1962’s Dr No), and given the bounty of British female writing talent including Abi Morgan (The Iron Lady, Shame, The Hour) and Sally Wainwright (Happy Valley, Last Tango in Halifax) whose respective works would align perfectly with this project, it’s a long-overdue move. But this is exactly where the industry should be focusing its gender representation efforts: both behind and in front of the camera.

Of the top 100 grossing films of 2018, women comprised just 15 per cent of writers. Only 16 women have ever won the Academy Award for best screenplay – over 90 years. It takes female writers to script real female characters, to reflect the nuance of womanhood and in turn bring in a new audience of women. Data visualisation website Polygraph analysed the dialogue of over 2,000 movies in 2016 and found that 78 per cent of them had a male lead. In the case of films with a female lead, men still claimed most speaking lines. More than just bringing Bond into the post #MeToo era, as Danny Boyle suggested he would do, this is about adapting the shagged then dumped – or killed – Bond pattern.

Female characters in Bond have improved in recent iterations. Judy Dench as M was a personal favourite. In GoldenEye (1995) she called Bond a “sexist, misogynistic dinosaur”. Of course, the fact that M was the only woman 007 didn’t try it on with was largely down to her age and therefore Dench’s character wasn’t a strong enough feminist antidote to puncture the patriarchal exterior. Although, hopefully, long gone are the days of using female characters purely to play out terrible innuendo like Pussy Galore, Honey Ryder and Dr Holly Goodhead.

Waller-Bridge won’t take away the fun of Bond either (don’t worry, lads!) – she will enhance it in droves. I’m not suggesting we will see Bond break the fourth wall mid-fight scene to tell us he needs to do a flash poo in Pret (a la Fleabag), but her whipsmart and nuanced female roles will give Bond the boost it has been looking for. Bond has become all too serious in recent years in an attempt to compete with Bourne and Mission Impossible, and Waller-Bridge will likely help it return to its whimsical roots, whilst retaining the sexual frisson. Was there anything sexier on TV in recent years than the hot priest telling Fleabag to “kneel”? Or the sexual tension between Killing Eve’s mischievous Villanelle and resolute Eve Polastri?

Bringing in Waller-Bridge signs the death knell for the sexism and casual xenophobia we’ve seen from icons of toxic masculinity in the past. It might also show Hollywood how valuable female screenwriters really are. We know that female action heroes sell, but female scriptwriters being called upon to inject nuance into tired old tropes? Well, that’s something much more interesting. And I think it’s safe to say she will do far more than simply make female supporting roles seem real; she will ensure the movie is shaken, not stirred – just the way Bond likes it.