Does it feel like a big responsibility, taking over from Desmond Llewelyn as Q?
Yes it does, and I think it was incredibly helpful that I’d done the previous movie [“The World is Not Enough”] as R, because when I walked onto the set at Pinewood I felt reasonably familiar with the environment and faces. I can’t tell you how scary it can be walking onto a movie and suddenly joining this family, it’s like going to somebody else’s Christmas dinner, everyone knows everyone, and you’re there and you’re not quite sure what you’re supposed to be doing. It was also hugely helpful that I established contact with the writers and we’d been sending bits of script and odd suggestions and comments backwards and forwards over fax machines, with the result that when I sat down for lunch with them and Barbara Broccoli, before I went on set, there was a real feeling we were all comfortable with it. Does the role of Q confer on you a perception of competence about all things technological? Yes, I’m afraid it does. But then acting is all about faking. We’re all very good at faking thi
