Idris Elba Has an Excellent Idea For Who the Next James Bond Should Be: "A Black Woman"

No matter how many times Idris Elba is asked about potentially playing James Bond, he always manages to say something brilliant.

Now that Daniel Craig's run as the iconic British spy is nearing its end — he (in)famously told a reporter that he'd "rather slash [his] wrists" than ever play 007 again, but is returning for one last mission — reporters can't resist asking Elba if he'd be willing to step into the character's trademark tuxedo. Normally we'd argue that no one is better suited to be the next Bond than the 45-year-old Mountain Between Us actor, but Elba actually has someone even better in mind.

"Are we interested in having a Bond character other than being a male? It could be a woman. It could be a black woman. It could be a white woman," he explained while sitting down with Variety at Sundance over the weekend. "I think that character, everybody would like to see them do something different with it."

Some diehard fans of the long-running spy franchise have argued that by changing the race or gender of the character, which has always been a white male, it would inherently no longer be "James Bond." Those people need to take a step back, look at their lives, look at their choices, and then accept that we all need to see a woman like Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Michaela Coel, Carmen Ejogo, or Thandie Newton (among many, many other viable options) order a martini shaken, not stirred.