Daniel Craig opens up about his latest movie, where he resumes his role as charismatic if eccentric detective Benoit Blanc in the hit whodunnit franchise Knives Out
Bond star Daniel Craig has said his latest film Wake Up Dead Man – the third instalment in the Knives Out films, is sadly very relevant to the ‘scary times’ we live in. “These movies are not whodunnits,” says the 57-year-old actor. “Those are the worst kind of movies.”
Craig’s quirky gentleman-detective Benoit Blanc, complete with his southern drawl, penchant for drama and sharp suits, made his first outing in the smash hit 2019 Netflix film Knives out, which channelled whodunnit queen Agatha Christie’s golden age of crime into a contemporary American setting.
The upcoming film, whose star-studded cast also includes Josh O’Connor, Andrew Scott and Glenn Close, is the follow-up to the second film in the franchise, 2022’s Glass Onions. As Craig admits in an interview with Radio Times, that film – which didn’t receive quite the rapturous reception as its predecessor, saw him criticised for being ‘over the top’.
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“But I always try and remind people, that’s what he was supposed to be. The whole point of the movie was that Benoit Blanc was a caricature of himself, he was attempting to disarm these awful people.”
Revealing his inspiration for the eccentric Blanc, Craig calls himself ‘a magpie, like every other actor’ and cites various iconic detectives – from Peter Ustinov’s Poirot to Albert Finney in Murder on the Orient Express.
In Wake Up Dead Man, whose dark American Gothic setting was actually recreated in Epping Forest, Essex – the actor heaps praise for the performance of co-lead Josh O’Connor, 35, known to UK audiences for The Durrells and The Crown – as Prince Charles.
O’Connor plays young Catholic priest Father Jud Duplenticy, who like many of the film’s characters is hiding dark secrets and was a professional boxer in a previous life, until he killed a man in the ring.
Modest about his own success, Glen Close compares the actor’s performance to Hollywood great, Jimmy Stewart, saying he has that “wonderful quality, a goodness that will be a comfort to people”, while Craig simply says, “Josh is brilliant – you just want him to shine.”
O’Connor credits Craig for landing his role in Wake Up Dead Man , and says the Bond icon is not only an ‘extraordinary’ actor, but surprisingly, gives a fascinating insight when he says, “He’s incredibly full of self-doubt and self-loathing… and constantly saying to me, ‘What do you think about that?’”
“It’s partly because what he does with Bond is so confident. But that’s not him at all. He’s like a boy. He’s sort of this sweet, insecure man who is incredibly charming and brings you in. He’s brilliant. I loved working with him.”
Wake Up Dead Man sees Blanc take on possibly his trickiest case to date, as he is tasked with solving the seemingly impossible murder of the charismatic yet intimidating Monsignor (Josh Brolin) at a small Catholic Parish in upstate New York.
Daniel Craig and the cast of Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery, out in selected cinemas and on Netflix from 12 December, were speaking to Radio Times.
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