Judi Dench's memoir reveals Daniel Craig ordered M's death in Skyfall

Dame Judi Dench has revealed that Daniel Craig personally suggested killing off her character M in Skyfall (2012). The claim appears in her new memoir, Is It Too Late to Make a Run for It?.

Dench writes that producers Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson, along with director Sam Mendes, broke the news to her over lunch at the Wolseley restaurant in London. "I was taken to the Wolseley restaurant by Barbara, Michael and Sam — I don't think Daniel Craig was there — and they outlined the plot and told me they were going to bump me off," she writes.

The key detail follows: "Apparently, it was Daniel's idea to have me killed."

Didn't she cry? No.

Dench also corrects the record on her departure from the franchise, which spanned 20 years and eight Bond films — one more than Roger Moore, the longest-serving 007 to date.

"It was reported in the press that I'd cried when they told me I was being replaced," she writes. "Of course I didn't cry. Why on earth would I cry after 20 glorious years and eight Bond films — which, by the way, is one more than Roger Moore, the longest-running 007 to date."

M died in Skyfall after the estate siege, closing a run that began with GoldenEye in 1995. For long stretches of the Craig era, Dench's M was the franchise's most reliably interesting element. Someone decided that asset had to go. Apparently that someone wore the tuxedo.

What did Craig want to kill next?

The M revelation isn't isolated. Craig, by his own account, asked Broccoli: "Can I kill him off at the end of the fourth one, please?" — the request came on the way back from the Berlin premiere of Casino Royale in 2006. Bond duly died in No Time to Die (2021), exploded in a hail of missile fire.

So the actor arrived wanting to kill Bond and, along the way, arranged the death of his boss. That's a striking hit rate for one career. Craig has said he wanted to tell the whole sweep of Bond's story, and by the account now on record he did exactly that, at terminal velocity.

Why this complicates the next Bond

The next 007 casting is reportedly imminent, with names such as Jack Lowden and Callum Turner in circulation. Whoever gets the role inherits a franchise where the previous lead killed a national treasure on screen and then killed Bond himself. Topping that is a genuine creative problem; Dench's memoir now documents exactly who set the bar.

The next Bond won't just be compared to Craig. He'll be measured against a predecessor who successfully proposed two on-screen deaths — and the memoir publishing cycle suggests the receipts will keep surfacing.