Mads Mikkelsen reveals ‘brutal and insane’ Casino Royale moment he wasn’t allowed to film

‘Come back to the table,’ the director told Mikkelsen. ‘This is a Bond film. We can’t go there’

Mads Mikkelsen was told the “brutal and insane” idea he had for a moment in Casino Royalewas too dark for a James Bond film.

The Danish actor played the villain Le Chiffre in the 2006 Bond film, opposite Daniel Craig. At the time, the film was seen as a gritty reimagining of Bond on-screen.

In a new interview with Vulture, Mikkelsen described shooting the scene in which his character tortures Bond, who is naked and bound to a chair.

“There were a few times when Daniel Craig and I went a little far at the table discussing what the scene might be able to do,” he said. “It was a scene where I tortured him and he’s stripped naked to the chair, which was kind of radical. We’ve never seen Bond naked, and we’ve never seen him that fragile, and then obviously there are some undertones with the rope.

“We were discussing how to approach it,” he continued, “and we just went further out with something that was really brutal and insane.”

According to Mikkelsen, one idea the pair concocted was that Le Chiffre “actually cut [Bond] up somewhere, and he had to suffer with that for a while”.

The actor added: “At a certain point, director Martin Campbell was just smiling and said, ‘Boys, come back to the table. This is a Bond film. We can’t go there.’

Mads Mikkelsen as Le Chiffre in Casino Royale (Danjaq, LLC and United Artists)

“We were lost in our indie world, right? You have to respect that. It is a Bond film. That’s the framework you need to understand.”

Mikkelsen’s latest film, Another Round, is in contention for two Academy Awards on Sunday (25 April): Best International Feature Film and Best Director (for Thomas Vinterberg).