Judi Dench has claimed that Daniel Craig devised the plan to kill off her character M in the James Bond franchise.
The Oscar-winning actress, 90, revealed in an excerpt from her forthcoming memoir published by Variety that the shocking death of her beloved spymaster in 2012’s Skyfall originated not with producers, but with the man who wore the tuxedo. Dench played M across eight Bond films spanning nearly two decades, beginning with Pierce Brosnan’s 1995 debut in GoldenEye and continuing through Craig’s 2006 arrival in Casino Royale.
“I’d been begging them to let me out from behind my desk,” Dench said. “Well, they did finally let me out from behind my desk… And they shot me. Apparently, it was Daniel’s idea to have me killed.”
The veteran actress maintained her trademark wit about the character’s brutal exit, which came at the hands of Javier Bardem’s vengeful ex-agent Raoul Silva. She joked about the indignity that preceded her death scene: “But first I had to suffer the indignity of being sacked by Ralph Fiennes.”
Fiennes, 62, entered the franchise as Gareth Mallory, the parliamentary overseer who pressured M to resign before inheriting her post upon her demise. He has held the role in every Bond installment since.
Dench directly confronted persistent industry gossip about her emotional response to leaving the role. Reports had long circulated that she wept upon learning of her replacement.
“It was reported in the press that I’d cried when they told me I was being replaced,” she said. “Of course I didn’t cry.”
She defended her legacy with pointed statistics. “Why on earth would I cry after twenty glorious years and eight Bond films?” Dench continued. “Which, by the way, is one more than Roger Moore, the longest-running 007 to date.”
The actress also reflected on the power she wielded as one of cinema’s most formidable authority figures. “I loved playing M because it was great to be able to tell all those men where to get off; put them in their place,” she shared. She recalled her character’s electrifying first encounter with Brosnan’s Bond, when she branded him a “sexist, misogynist dinosaur.”
“I was drunk with power,” Dench added. “I also got to wear some very nice suits and pretend I knew what I was talking about; and to muck about with gadgets when, in real life, I can’t even work the ironing board.”
Dench’s tenure bridged two distinct eras of the franchise. Brosnan’s run concluded with 2002’s gadget-heavy Die Another Day, while Craig’s reboot began with the stripped-down, poker-faced Casino Royale. Her death in Skyfall marked the first time a sitting M perished on screen, a creative choice that paralleled Craig’s own eventual fate.
The 007 position remains vacant following Craig’s swan song in 2021’s No Time to Die, which featured the first on-screen death of Bond himself. Among the rumored successors, Slow Horses star Jack Lowden has emerged as a reported favorite, though he has declined to confirm or deny his involvement.