Pam Grier turned down the role of the Bond girl in Octopussy

February 9, 2023

“I asked, ‘Should I challenge Bond?’ Am I about to kill you? Do I kill him before he kills me?” They didn’t think of that.”

Pam Grier waits for no one, not even James Bond.

The iconic ‘Foxy Brown’ star has revealed she turned down a role in 007’s ‘Octopussy’ opposite Roger Moore.

“My agents met with the broccoli family (growers) and I’m saying I’m not available,” Grier said. Entertainment Weekly. “They looked at me and said, ‘Well, why are you here?’ I go, ‘I don’t know. My agent told me to come and meet.

Grier continued, “I just felt like being a Bond girl: What am I going to do? Can I help save you? Will you save me? A Bond girl afterthought, maybe a CliffsNote. I asked: Shall I challenge Bond? Am I about to kill you? Do I kill him before he kills me? They didn’t think of that. I gave them other ideas that were much deeper and more interesting than what they were doing.”

Maud Adams instead played the Bond character in the 1983 film.

“I just wanted to do really deep character pieces that weren’t predictable,” Grier recalled. “I refused everything.”

The “Jackie Brown” star previously spoke about how she almost quit Hollywood before her 1974 “Foxy Brown” fame. “I wasn’t sure I was going to continue filming,” Grier said Fox News interview from November. “But it turns out I’ve developed an audience. Not only women, but also artists and filmmakers liked to see a woman walking in men’s shoes, and they saw her as strong and combative. Here was a woman expressing herself freely, in a non-depicted way… I come from the Black West, from women who are wholesome but fierce. I wanted to incorporate this into my work. I brought people in and it opened the floodgates.”

In 2022, Michelle Yeoh reflected on how her casting of Pierce Brosnan as Bond Girl 007 in 1997’s Tomorrow Never Dies was revolutionary for the franchise.

“Bond was ready for a change,” Yeoh said. “Bond had to evolve because the fan base evolved. Women chose the movie to go see, and we don’t always want to watch movies where we’re being sexualized.”

She added: “Looking like me, I don’t think sexualisation is a big issue!”

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