As the latest sign that she's one of the biggest rising stars of the year,Ana de Armasis on the cover of Vanity Fair's March 2020 issue. The prestigious magazine released the cover image on Tuesday, along with some of De Armas' photoshoot and a lengthy interview in which the Cuban-Spanish actress talks about reinventing the Bond girl.
And it turns out, this Bond girl, Paloma, was written just for her. Director Cary Joji Fukunaga told Vanity Fair he wrote Paloma “specifically for Ana, adding a layer of humor to the character that I hadn’t seen her do yet—which I thought might be fun.” As for what he saw in De Armas that made him want to cast her, Fukunaga said, "It’s intangible. People either have that magic quality you want to watch or they don’t. She has it."
Cond\u00e9 Nast
In her interview with Vanity Fair, De Armas said that while she was "jumping all over the place and very excited" when she was offered the part of Paloma in No Time to Die, she also wanted to make sure it "wouldn’t jeopardize all the work" she's put into choosing her roles, making sure they're not sexist or culturally insensitive to the Latinx community. After all, this is the woman who nearly turned down her breakthrough role in Knives Out because her character, Marta Cabrera, was described as a "pretty Latin caretaker."
"The Bond women have always been, for me at least, unrelatable," De Armas said plainly.
Judging from the new No Time to Die trailer that dropped over the weekend, De Armas' Paloma will certainly be glamorous, but she'll also be more accessible and more in on the action than the Bond girls we've seen before.
"Her character is someone who’s just started working for the CIA, and so she’s supposed to have minimal training when she first meets Bond," producer Barbara Broccoli told Vanity Fair. "The expectation is that she’s not going to be the most proficient agent, but let’s just say that she really packs a punch.”
It helps that most of De Armas' dialogue was written by Emmy-winning Fleabag creator Phoebe Waller-Bridge.
"You could also tell that Phoebe was in there,” De Armas said. “There was that humor and spikiness so specific to her. My character feels like a real woman. But you know, we can evolve and grow and incorporate reality, but Bond is a fantasy. In the end, you can’t take things out of where they live.”
During the Vanity Fair interview, De Armas also breezily waved off rumors about her own love life. (She's previously been linked to Bradley Cooper.)
"I’ve had company here, but it’s been the wrong company so I prefer to be alone," she said.
With No Time to Die and her upcoming film Sergio both being released in April—and filming Deep Water in New Orleans with Ben Affleck on top of that—De Armas clearly has enough on her plate.
First The New York Times Sunday crossword puzzle, now her first major U.S. magazine cover? It's clear 2020 is Ana de Armas' year.
