The Bond movies have always struggled to keep up with the times, not always successfully. But no era of the series has been more overtly progressive than the Daniel Craig years. His 007 is a moody brooder, haunted by the one that got away. (In No Time to Die, he still hasn’t gotten over Eva Green’s Vesper Lynd, some 15 years after her death in Casino Royale.) He rarely even sleeps around. But there’s one tradition that has not yet been snuffed out: People are still using the term “Bond girls.”
Léa Seydoux, who’s played Bond’s steady across two movies, thinks it’s time for an update. In a new interview on Good Morning America, the French actress was asked if she felt the phrase, long used to describe the ladies Bond shacks up with (or not), was “antiquated,” Sedoux agreed. “I think we can call them ‘Bond women.’”
Seydoux added that she liked that her character, Madeleine Swan, is “uncommon” and “quite unexpected for a Bond girl,” because, she says, “she’s not here to please James Bond. She’s, this time, a real woman with depth and vulnerability, which is something quite new for a Bond woman.”
She added, “I think I can thank Daniel in a way because he’s a feminist, and it’s because of him that the female characters have changed so much. It was time to now have stronger female characters, so I’m really happy for that.”
You can watch Seydoux’s GMA interview in the video below.