If the Paris Carter/Terri hatcher character was an annual ex bond girl

John from Cork

Some bond fans including myself think it was a massive missed opportunity that Bonds ex from TND wasn't an actual character from a past movie. I think it should have been Sylvia Trench played by someone who wasn't Terri hatcher.

nobody

Just watched the movie the other day, and thought the same thing! There are plenty to choose from, including Ms Trench. great call!

Number24

Natalya Simonova from GE would have been another possibility.

Eggsy

I remember reading that a “ famous actress” was up for that role that Hatcher landed but wanted too much salary. Any idea who that may have been? I always wondered, in 96-97 big stars were like Julia Roberts and the like, or Kidman? Any body have any ideas?

superado

The socialite playgirl...you’d think they’d be a Bond staple, but there have been surprisingly few, with the best of them, Tracy! Like in the film series, the playgirls have been implied in the Fleming books but not often shown.

Charmed & Dangerous

Eggsy wrote:

I remember reading that a “ famous actress” was up for that role that Hatcher landed but wanted too much salary. Any idea who that may have been? I always wondered, in 96-97 big stars were like Julia Roberts and the like, or Kidman? Any body have any ideas?

Monica Bellucci was Brosnan's choice and screen tested for the role, but (as he put it at the time in a Playboy interview):

Brosnan: Monica Bellucci is a ravishing beauty — a gorgeous, gorgeous woman. She screen-tested to be a Bond girl a while back and the fools said no. Teri Hatcher stole the day instead.

The Red Kind

Eggsy wrote:

I remember reading that a “ famous actress” was up for that role that Hatcher landed but wanted too much salary. Any idea who that may have been? I always wondered, in 96-97 big stars were like Julia Roberts and the like, or Kidman? Any body have any ideas?

Interesting. If that is true then was probably one of the biggest stars of the 90's;

Julia Roberts
Michelle Pfeiffer
Sharon Stone
Demi Moore

Number24

Out of those I'd back Michell Pheiffer every time. Very tallented and one of the great beauties of cinema.

Barbel

John from Cork wrote:

annual ex bond girl

It's been many years since we had one of those.

Number24

Uma Thurman, Cameron Diaz, juliette Binoche, Sandra Bullock, Meg Ryan, Drew Barrymore were also great movie stars at the time.
Of those I think Uma Thurman or Juliette Binoche could have been great.

caractacus potts

I don't think Paris could be Natalya from Goldeneye. Remember her "boys with toys" outburst and all her reactions to Boris' behaviour. She was too modern and empowered a woman to choose to be a rich man's trophy bride.
(though she did have the tech chops to find work in a communications empire once relocated to the west, Carver might possibly have met her while she was working for him)

Of all classic BondGirls, I think the most likely would be Tiffany Case. The brash cynical Jill St John version, not the badly damaged Fleming version. She was materialistic and amoral. I could see movieTiffany as a gold-digger willing to marry a man so unashamedly corrupt as Carver if it meant unlimited wealth and a posh glamourous lifestyle.

SeanIsTheOnlyOne

Number24 wrote:

Out of those I'd back Michell Pheiffer every time. Very tallented and one of the great beauties of cinema.

I agree. But you can comfort yourself with The Russia House in which she plays some kind of Bond girl

SeanIsTheOnlyOne

John from Cork wrote:

Some bond fans including myself think it was a massive missed opportunity that Bonds ex from TND wasn't an actual character from a past movie. I think it should have been Sylvia Trench played by someone who wasn't Terri hatcher.

I truly adore Sylvia Trench, especially in Dr No. She's so sexy, classy and charismatic !

I think it would have been a shame to "destroy" a character Eunice Gayson made so legendary. Whoever they would have hired, I'm glad it didn't happen.

Number24

caractacus potts wrote:

I don't think Paris could be Natalya from Goldeneye. Remember her "boys with toys" outburst and all her reactions to Boris' behaviour. She was too modern and empowered a woman to choose to be a rich man's trophy bride.
(though she did have the tech chops to find work in a communications empire once relocated to the west, Carver might possibly have met her while she was working for him)

Of all classic BondGirls, I think the most likely would be Tiffany Case. The brash cynical Jill St John version, not the badly damaged Fleming version. She was materialistic and amoral. I could see movieTiffany as a gold-digger willing to marry a man so unashamedly corrupt as Carver if it meant unlimited wealth and a posh glamourous lifestyle.

I see your point, but I'm not sure Natalya wouldn't have married Carver. I get the feeling Paris didn't know what kind of man Carver was. She probably suspected it by the time of TND, but I don't think she saw his negative sides when they married.
Tiffany Case is the eprfect type to marry a rich man, no doubt. The question is if they should have used any of the Bond girls from before Brosnan's tenure. I'm unsure myself. Perhaps Sylvia Trench would have been best since the casual viewer don't know who she is, but proper Bond fans will enjoy it.
Of Brosnan's leading ladies I think Christmas Jones is the other candidate, and frankly I think the trophy wife fits Denise Richards better than a scientist. I can picture Christmas falling in love with a rich man and quiting her career.

Eggsy

I’ll double check, I think it is mentioned in the TND making of book.

Yep page 70 Pierce’s quote:
“There was a beautiful woman up for the part of Paris, a really lovely movie star who I spoke out loud and hard for. But it was not meant to be.”

I think they may mention it in the audio commentary also.

Shady Tree

I agree that (the movie version of) Tiffany Case would have been the 'best fit' previous Bond girl to become Mrs Carver. But the decision was right to imagine Paris as an original character with her own unique 'history' with Bond. Too much 'fan service' at a continuity level can detract from the freshness of a new Bond picture. Witness the Craig films: the use of sequels and recurring characters (further to a core MI6 team) may prove a negative when finally we get to evaluate the Craig era as a whole.

In the context of the mid 90s, TND was all about Brosnan coming into his own as a new Bond for the Britpop generation. Brosnan's era was almost a soft re-boot, with in-film allusions to Bond's cinematic past being treated largely as a matter of wry irony. GE had already positioned the 'new' Bond as a character with dimensions to his past which are 'new' to the audience - Alec Trevelyan is introduced as a former Double-O who had evidently been a close friend and partner of Bond during Cold War operations in the 80s - and TND is continuing this trend in 'new' history by introducing Paris.

The more credible place to have imagined Tiffany Case or Sylvia Trench (or any other contender from Bond's cinematic or literary past) as the ill-fated Mrs Carver might have been in the Benson novelisation... but, in reality, Benson's brief for the novelisation would have been to stick closely to the movie, for tie-in marketing purposes, without pulling any significant 'fan service' stunts of his own.

A key argument holds ground that iconic/ celebrated characters from the franchise's past were/ are best left alone, without introducing downbeat footnotes to their established stories in new material. It's arguably enough that certain 'types' of character recur.

Number24

That' the sensible and boring reply.

emtiem

I wonder what her maiden name was? I hope they went the Agent Fields route and it was something ridiculous like 'Innaspring'.

I agree Pfeiffer would have been amazing, but it would be quite a crap role for her really. It's not a good female role at all really: she's just there to service the male characters.

Mr Martini

Do you think if they had brought back a female character from a previous Bond adventure to be put in place of Paris, would that character have met the same fate as Paris?

emtiem

That's a good point, killing off a former main Bond girl is a bit of a 'actually Newt and Hicks died a few minutes later' ruiner of the film she was in, isn't it.

Shady Tree

That was also one of my boring but sensible points