GQ Shares How Starring Roles Put Ben Whishaw in the Thick of It In 2022
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British GQ says that between his heart-warming role in the Queen’s final act and starring in this year’s most pertinent NHS drama put out actor Ben Whishaw in the center of the action in 2022.
Starting with providing the voice of Paddington for that teddy bear’s tea party with the Queen. “I didn’t act with Her Majesty, but I was so amazed,” he says. “I thought she did such a brilliant job. But yeah. Strange. What a strange year it’s been.”
Over the past 12 months, Whishaw has found himself an unexpected conduit for people dealing with reality as the Paddington sketch, recorded for the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee celebrations, later became an articulation of people’s grief for the monarch. “People have such affection for that character and obviously for the Queen. He’s somehow just a channel for people to feel certain things,” says Whishaw, trying to make sense of it all. “It’s a connection to a gentleness that otherwise people maybe struggled to access.”
The whole Paddington thing is strange, Whishaw admits, but while he might feel slightly ridiculous talking about this bear in too serious a fashion, it is also a huge part of his creative life; in the last three years, he’s recorded Paddington’s voice for almost 200 episodes of the animated series. “it’s a massive part of my life now. And I do love it,” he smiles. “It’s another thing that I never imagined I would be doing. But it is a real pleasure.” He doesn’t know why, he says. But then, in his way of giving thoughts a go, he does. “It’s like, well, it’s an escape, isn’t it? From, I suppose, reality.”
All of this: the Queen, the Bear and being party to that other great British institution, as Q in the James Bond franchise, puts Whishaw in danger of becoming a bit of a national treasure himself. Put to him, it’s the one thing he is definitely sure he is not. “I don’t think that, no. I don’t think I am. I don’t think anyone really knows who I am,” he maintains. He gets stopped for photos, or people wanting to tell him how good he was in that show off the telly, but that’s the level of his fame, he says, and that suits him. “I just want to be an actor. I like it when people don’t really quite know who you are, or they go, ‘oh, the guy who was in that’.”
We move on to talk about 007, inevitably. Where does that go next? Will he be back as Q? He shrugs. “I could imagine, honestly, that they might just be recasting the whole thing,” he ventures. That said, if he did return, he’s certain about one thing. “They switched the dynamic when I took over as Q to him being younger than Bond. I would really enjoy being older than Bond. I’d like to be the older guy, crotchety and impatient. That would be really fun.”
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When No Time to Die was released last year, actor Whishaw made history as the first person to portray an openly gay main character in a James Bond movie, thanks to a brief scene in the film in which his character Q is seen cooking dinner and preparing for a date with a man. But in an interview with The Guardian, Whishaw admitted that the way the reveal of his character’s sexual orientation was handled was a bit “unsatisfying.”
The revelation about Q’s sexuality was limited to one sentence, in which he references his date’s gender by saying, “He’ll be here in 20 minutes,” after being interrupted at his home by Bond and Moneypenny. It’s never addressed further in the film, and some fans felt as though it was a way for the studio to get credit for including a gay character without fully committing to it, limiting it to one tossed-off line that could be easily edited out for foreign markets.
Whishaw, who is openly gay in real life, told the publication he hasn’t received many comments about the scene, save for one positive text message. “Otherwise, no one has given me any feedback,” he said. “So I’m really interested in these questions. And I’m very happy to admit maybe some things were not great about that [creative] decision.”
The actor said he remembered being bothered by how short the scene was when he read the script. “I think I thought, ‘Are we doing this, and then doing nothing with it?’ I remember, perhaps, feeling that was unsatisfying.”
He also clarified that he thought producers were coming “from a good place” by including a gay character and admitted that he considered saying something about it but ultimately decided not to.
“For whatever reason, I didn’t pick it apart with anybody on the film,” he said. “Maybe on another kind of project I would have done? But it’s a very big machine. I thought a lot about whether I should question it. Finally I didn’t. I accepted this was what was written. And I said the lines. And it is what it is.”
