Halle Berry Originally Looked Down on ‘Kingsman’ for Trying to Be Like James Bond
Halle Berry felt the Kingsman movies were very similar to the James Bond franchise on the surface. So much so that she admitted to having a low opinion of the film at first.
Halle Berry felt she was a little snobby towards ‘Kingsman’
Berry already had some familiarity with Kingsman director Matthew Vaughn. Vaughn was supposed to direct Berry’s third X-Men film The Last Stand before dropping out of the project. But the two would end up finally collaborating for Kingsman: The Golden Circle. It was a sequel to the first movie The Secret Service, and saw Berry teaming up with the Statesman.
The role was different from anything that Berry previously played. In Golden Circle, she played Ginger Ale, the tech expert of the faction. It was the type of character she couldn’t believe she was considered for.
“I was shocked that Matthew would think of me,” Berry told Made in Hollywood. “Would you think to cast me in a part like that? What I love about it is to have this woman, this black woman, African American woman who is the brains behind the operation is very forward thinking because I’m not sure very many people would put a woman of color in that role. So I think it was pretty cool.”
But the Oscar winner had her reservations about Kingsman due to its surface similarities with James Bond, who she has a deep connection with.
“I come from the Bond world,” Berry said. “So when I first heard about this Kingsman trying to be like Bond, I was a little snobby about it.”
Her opinion quickly changed after seeing the finished product.
“I thought: ‘Wow, it is fresh,’” she remembered. “Kingsman sort of puts a new life into this age-old story of the English gentlemen and their wry humor. I just loved it.”
Berry was also pleased to see that Vaughn met her expectations when developing the nerdy Ginger like she hoped he would.
“I think nerd is a great word. And nerds love being nerds,” Berry once told Cinema. “After Matthew Vaughn, the director, invited me to be in this movie, that was one of the things that made me really happy. He said that I’d start off as one thing but by the end of the movie, I’d be something else. He told me I’d be wildly happy about it. He didn’t tell me what that was at the time. He just said I’d be wildly happy, and I really am. I love it. It’s right in my sweet spot and what I love to do.”
Halle Berry feels working on James Bond helped prepare her for ‘Kingsman’
Berry’s two roles in Bond and Kingsman couldn’t have been any more different. Berry played the Bond girl Jinx in Die Another Day, who was involved in a lot of the film’s more thrilling sequences. So much so Jinx was seen as an action hero herself, almost earning herself her own spin-off.
Berry felt her work on Die Another Day helped prep her for Kingsman, even more so than her X-Men movies.
“The Bond movie I did I think most informed this experience. These are big huge movies with big huge stars and it’s a big huge concept,” Berry once told Comicbook. “It helped that I had worked on a few of these before.”
She enjoyed her Kingsman role so much she was more than eager to return in a potential sequel.
“I’m ready. My character’s definitely ready,” she said. “I see some knives in her future.”
