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Just weeks before the release of the new James bond film back in March, Ana de Armas and her fellow Bond co-stars were gearing up for the film’s huge premiere at London’s grandiose Royal Albert Hall. A bigger celebration than usual was planned: this was, after all, Bond’s 25th outing and Daniel Craig’s swansong from a role he’s held for the last fourteen years.

Of course, the premiere didn’t happen. No Time to Die was one of the first cinematic casualties of the pandemic, its release pushed back to November as coronavirus brought chaos to the world. Now, just weeks away from its new release date, de Armas is thrilled that it’s finally time to unveil Bond 25 to the world.

“I feel like I’ve been talking about Bond for so very long now!” de Armas smiles, remembering the very first round of interviews she did about her upcoming role as CIA agent Paloma almost eighteen-months ago. “It’s been such a long time coming but finally, the theaters are starting to re-open and the world can finally see it. I’m looking forward to the moment and I’m really hoping... we also get a chance to celebrate after all the hard work,” she says, leaning into the webcam, demonstrably crossing her index and middle finger on both hands.

After a year of so much unpredictability, some finger-crossing might well be needed: de Armas admits that with so many pandemic restrictions still in place, she isn’t sure if the cast will get a chance to mark the film’s release this autumn. “I still don’t really know if I’m going to see my co-stars or if we’re going to get to celebrate together finally. It’s Daniel’s last movie and that’s a big deal—it’s been very emotional for everybody. I don’t even know if we’re all going to be able to get together yet,” she shrugs.

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The cast and crew certainly deserve a celebration: it’s hard to remember a film in Bond’s 58-year-history beset with as many early challenges as No Time to Die. First, Jane Eyre director Carey Fukunaga was brought in to helm the project following the departure of Oscar winning Slumdog Millionaire director Danny Boyle, who left citing “creative differences.” Next, reports emerged of a revolving-door writer team, with Fleabag and Killing Eve’s Phoebe Waller-Bridge eventually brought in to “polish” and “spice up” the script. There were multiple on set mishaps too, the most notable of which saw Craig needing surgery following an accident whilst filming.

One of the last occasions de Armas saw Craig prior to lockdown was at the Golden Globe Awards where the pair presented an award together. De Armas also received her first nomination at the event for her breakout role as Marta Cabrera in 2019 smash Knives Out—a role she starred in alongside Craig. Appearing with other seasoned cast members including Jamie Lee Curtis, Christopher Plum- mer and Chris Evans, de Armas was singled out for praise in Rian Johnson’s witty and clever re-working of the traditional whodunnit. Empire magazine said de Armas’ turn was “superb” while The Guardian said it was “striking.” The Times went a step further and said: “the film’s standout performance comes from its least well-known member, the Cuban de Armas.”

“Things could have been very different,” de Armas, 32, smiles, as she sits relaxed on her sofa in a large, bright room surrounded by bookshelves. She explains that when the first audition invitation for Knives Out came in, she received just a three-word description of her character: “Latina, caretaker, pretty.” De Armas was far from impressed. “I really pay attention to what that little description is,” she says, when an initial character sketch comes through from a casting director. “I’m sure whoever did it wasn’t thinking about what that meant but for me, I was just like, ‘Oh no, I’m not doing this!’ What do you mean—caretaker, Latina, pretty?’”

From her earliest acting days as a young teenager in her native Cuba, de Armas was well used to being offered stereotypical Latina parts, where the characters often shared depressingly similar characteristics. De Armas thought Marta was just going to be another Latina as nurse, caregiver, wife, mother or girlfriend—pretty, fiery or tempestuous were other frequent labels.

“I’m very proud of being Cuban and being Latina and I will play the most Latina any Latina has ever played Latina,” she smiles, before quickly turning serious. “But it also doesn’t interest me that much, all the time. It gets very boring, very quickly and I want to do other things... and even if you’re playing a Latina, not all Latinas are the same... I want to think and believe that I can play anybody, anywhere in the world because the stories I want to tell are universal. I want to be able to tell any story.”

When the audition call for Blade Runner 2049 landed on her desk, previous casting experiences left her convinced she wouldn’t get the part. De Armas says casting directors could rarely see beyond her birthplace or accent. “I was terrified,” she admits, recalling the lengthy audition process she experienced. “I auditioned for it three times and I was sure I was not going to get it. I was 100% convinced in fact. I cried at home waiting for the answer because I knew it was going to be a ‘no’. It would be a no because I wasn’t American, because I was Cuban, because of my accent, because I wasn’t blonde. I was convinced I was not what they were looking for.”

When the call from director Denis Villeneuve eventually arrived offering her the part, she thought a shift in the industry might finally be on the way. “I realized when he called that sometimes difference is what they’re looking for and when that happens, you have to just grab that opportunity and make the best of it and move the needle a little bit more. Of course, I understand that still doesn’t happen to everyone all the time: it’s still very challenging for women in general to get a good part, there’s almost nothing... good roles for women, for Latina characters, are still so difficult to come by,” de Armas says, her frustration palpable.

“I think we need to push for [better roles]... I think writers, directors and producers and all the people who make those decisions and create those stories... are realizing how much richer things are when we represent the world the way it actually is.”

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When she got the initial, reductive description for Marta in Knives Out, she was already in the middle of filming Netflix thriller Sergio in Thailand. “For me to stop doing everything to record a self-tape and prepare for that, well... it has to be really good.” Not convinced by “Latina, caretaker, pretty”, she asked for more information. What eventually landed was a pleasant surprise, and as with Blade Runner 2049, it convinced her yet more change was on the way. Marta was a “three-dimensional, real character”, de Armas says, and one who tore up existing stereotypes of Latinas.

“My character was a diamond,” de Armas smiles, recalling the moment she read her pages fondly. “When they sent the whole script and I read the whole thing I realized ‘oh my gosh I have to do this’,” she says of Johnson’s “incredible” screenplay. Another draw came in the way the dialogue subtly interrogated President Trump’s immigration policies through the ensemble’s treatment of Marta. “It was a great take on that matter,” de Armas says, “Johnson is a genius. Sometimes humor... sits better with people and people are more open, it resonates more when [the message] is straightforward. I think in this case, it was a very smart thing to do.”

The first day of filming Knives Out was a nerve-wracking experience, de Armas says, overwhelmed by the illustrious cast. “Imagine how I felt!” she says, describing her first day on set. “I was really nervous, I was terrified,” she emphasizes, pausing. “I knew I had a lot of work ahead of me... you are working with these people who you’ve been watching on the screen for so many years, my whole life, and you don’t know what they’re going to be like. You don’t know how they like to work... how much you can approach [them]...what their boundaries are. And then my own insecurities as an actor—my English, my accent. Everything was making me very nervous at the beginning.”

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Mention of the Golden Globe nomination for her part makes her redden and a look of disbelief still crosses her face. Despite being tipped as Hollywood’s next big star, you get the feeling de Armas still doesn’t feel she quite belongs, perhaps because of the hurdles it’s taken to get here, perhaps because seeing a Latina on a film set in Hollywood still feels painfully rare. She says she was just happy to be on the set of Knives Out.

“It was just such a joy to go there every day and at least for me, sitting next to all these people in the basement of that house, listening to all their stories and their lives, it was incredible. I think at the same time, we all respected each other...everyone had the space to be creative.” Whilst de Armas may have felt out of place, the audition calls that continued to amass proved she should perhaps feel quite the opposite.

One such call came from Andrew Dominik who invited de Armas to play one of the most recognizable figures in history: Marilyn Monroe. It was yet more evidence for her that casting for Latina actresses was shifting, but the process, she says, wasn’t without issues. Whilst Dominik wanted her for the part, she had to undergo a gruelling round of further auditions until the ‘yes’ finally came from all those involved in the process. Some, she suggests, weren’t initially convinced a Latina could play Monroe. “I’m not going to let anybody or anything tell me I cannot dream of playing Marilyn Monroe,” she says of the life-changing casting. “Things need to change [in the industry] but you have to actively push for change too... you have to present your version of the character in a different way. You have to challenge.”

Challenge she did: her portrayal of Marilyn won over the casting team and earned early praise from close friend Jamie Lee Curtis, who she met on the set of Knives Out. Curtis, who saw de Armas’ audition tape for Marilyn, was astounded by the transformation—praise indeed from someone whose father Tony starred alongside Monroe in one of her most famous movies, Some Like It Hot. “She is my biggest cheerleader,” de Armas laughs as she remembers Curtis’ reaction. “I showed her my screen test for Marilyn and of course I had on like a random wig they found which didn’t fit me, so-so make up and so-so wardrobe but even then, seeing me in the part like that, she got very excited.”

Her preparation for the role in Blonde (it’s based on Joyce Carol Oates’ Pulitzer-nominated historical novel of the same name) has been meticulous and she reels off facts about Monroe like a student sitting an exam. “It was very intense,” de Armas says of the time which saw her working with a dialect coach for a year and studying Monroe’s many letters, memoirs and films. “There was so much information; everybody has a story about Marilyn. I’ve never had to prepare for something so specific, play someone so well-known and one of the most photographed people in the world. I looked through all the books, the movies, the theories about her death and it took me forever. And then of course I had to work on the accent, the voice. It was a lot of work.”

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Wearing a powder blue cardigan, white top and vintage navy trousers, de Armas suddenly darts up from the sofa on which she is sitting and runs over to a door behind her. “Gimme a second.” Moments later, Elvis, her adorable dog and recurring star of her Instagram feed (where she has over 3.4 million followers) runs in excitedly and joins de Armas momentarily on the sofa before he starts to wander around the room. “He’s in Blonde too!” she beams. Elvis will play one of Marilyn’s dogs, Mafia, who was given to her by Frank Sinatra. “He’s a movie star, of course,” she says, in response to a question about how Elvis is coping with his new-found fame. “And he’s Elvis!” she laughs, comparing him to his famous namesake.

De Armas was about to start filming Blonde (with Elvis in tow) when she received the call from Bond’s new director, Cary Fukunaga, offering her a role in No Time to Die. It came as a shock, she explains, especially when he told her he’d conceived a part with her specifically in mind. The pair had worked together previously on another project (it didn’t go ahead in the end), but he remembered de Armas and was convinced she was ideal for the role. “It was quite a surprise to get a call from him, proposing if I wanted to be in Bond,” de Armas says of the out-of-the-blue moment. “I wasn’t expecting it at all. Bond has been such a big thing in all of our lives since I can’t remember when, so to be invited, to be asked to be a part of that world was very exciting.”

As with Knives Out, de Armas didn’t accept the role immediately, however, recalling how Fukunaga’s original description for the potential role was far too vague. “When Cary called me for Bond, he was offering me the character and said: ‘she’s Cuban, bubbly and funny and this and that’, but he had nothing on the page at this point. It was all in his head. He was still creating this character and I was very excited, but I told him, ‘Cary, I can’t say yes before I read it! Even though I want to work with you, I want to be in Bond, I want to work with Daniel again, I want all of these things, but I have to read the script!’”

In the #timesup era, it’s perhaps no wonder there was some caution. Many of the traditional ‘Bond Girl’ characters haven’t aged well, with roles often characterised by an uncomfortable mix of passivity, objectification and misogynistic innuendo. “I wanted to make sure what I was getting myself into because... you have to eventually talk about it like we are now and you have to feel it matches up with your values, what you believe in and that you are representing the woman you want to represent,” de Armas affirms.

“Also, at some point you have to play parts that are quite the opposite of you,” she continues, “and that is enriching and exciting about my work too, but... I wanted to just really understand what kind of woman I was playing. I try to do that with every part. I try to read it, understand it and if there is something that doesn’t sit well with me, I then try to at least talk about it and understand where that is coming from and why it has to be that way.”

Phoebe Waller-Bridge, the Primetime Emmy-winning writer of Fleabag, was eventually brought in to work on the script at the request of producer Barbara Broccoli and Craig, who was a fan of her work on both Fleabag and Killing Eve. Waller-Bridge will be only the second female writer in the film’s history (after Johanna Harwood who worked on Dr No and From Russia With Love) to get a writing credit. “Having a female voice like Phoebe’s was also very appealing,” de Armas says, after she eventually saw her pages from the script. “It was a big magnet for me to get involved in the project... Phoebe has a great sense of humor.”

De Armas lights up talking about her character. “My part in the movie is very exciting and different and I think she spices things up. She is very funny in her own way,” de Armas reveals, saying Waller-Bridge’s trademark humour was evident when she read her character’s lines. “It’s really exciting being a part of Bond [at this time]. I think you will see that, without going away from what a Bond girl is, you will see a difference in the sense of seeing this woman as an individual, instead of just someone who is there to make the hero look good... she’s not there to serve him... she’s actually there to facilitate him to accomplish something. She’s her own person. She’s funny, she’s clever, she comes up with her own ideas. She’s a partner instead of the one who needs to be saved.”

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After accepting the role, what followed was a chaotic period of trying to balance finishing work on Blonde with starting work on No Time to Die, the two projects overlapping. “I was preparing for Blonde and then I got the James Bond offer. I had to put all of that on pause and get out of the Marilyn world and get ready for Bond, with all its action, whilst also trying to bring out the Cuban in me again.” For the best part of a year, de Armas had immersed herself in playing “both Marilyn and Norma Jean,” as she puts it, the public and private side of the late star often feeling like separate entities. To complicate matters, after she accepted Bond, she realized she had only a matter of weeks before filming began in the UK at Pinewood Studios. “From the moment when I went to London to start shooting, I think [I had] maybe three weeks before the shoot, so not that much time, not in the sense of preparing for the scenes and the dialogue and all of that, but the physical part too. I’ve never done an action-movie before; three weeks was nothing.”

Did the intensity of the training come as a shock? She nods comically. “For me,” she says, pointing mockingly at herself with a smirk, “Compared to what Lashana [Lynch, who is rumoured to be taking over the 007 role when Craig departs] had to do in the film, for example, it was nothing,” she explains. “But I went from zero to a hundred very quickly with all the action training.”

When she eventually arrived on set, her stay was short lived. Just days after arriving, news of Craig’s injury filtered through and she was stood down. “Daniel got injured and then they had to shoot other things in the movie without him because he was going under surgery and all that. I ended up having three months off in-between where I just had to wait for them to call me again. I went back to filming Marilyn.”

To help her through the chaos, de Armas no doubt drew on her earliest days filming and studying in Cuba where she was a skilled multitasker from a young age. She enrolled at theatre school aged 13, made her first film while still studying at 16 and at then at 18, landed a lead role in Spanish teen-hit El Internado.

“When you go through phases as a child, ‘I’m going to be a veterinarian, a lawyer, a doctor, a teacher’, all of that, I don’t remember [wanting to do] anything else when I actually started thinking seriously about what I wanted to do that wasn’t acting,” de Armas recalls. “I don’t remember feeling like I wanted to do anything else...since I was 11 or 12, I just started driving my parents crazy, just repeating on loop I want to be an actress, I want to be an actress.” After four years at drama school, de Armas had a good understanding of the industry thanks to the fact she worked and studied at the same time, learning to balance multiple projects from her mid-teens.

“I was actually getting ahead of a lot of things because to me, [the set] was the actual school. I was going to set every day, I was learn- ing what it was like to listen to a director, to work with other people, to learn my lines, [to learn] the responsibility of showing up on time on set, everything...after doing my first movie, at 16, I just wanted to do more and more.”

At 18, she moved to Madrid and was offered a part in the aforementioned teen-drama El Internado soon after arriving. Thanks to having Spanish grandparents, de Armas was able to leave Cuba on a Spanish passport and made the move to Madrid as soon as school ended. “I was very determined and told my parents as soon as I reach 18, I am going to use my Spanish passport that had been in the drawer for 18 years and I’m going to go. I feel so lucky they just let me do my thing and trusted me.” What came as a surprise, however, was how soon the role turned her into a household name in Spain.

“It was a big change for me,” de Armas remembers the culture shock that came with moving from Havana to Madrid. “All of a sud- den, almost overnight becoming so famous in Spain and to be recognised on the street and everybody wanting a picture with you and things like that, it was surreal.”

After six seasons on the television show and homesick, de Armas was finding herself returning to Cuba more and more. “Every little bit of time off I had in the show, I went back and back and back. Life is so different there that I think that was what actually kept me centered and connected to that,” she says of how she found calm amidst the chaos that fame brought. “My people and my family and what I call real life...I missed that.”

The homesickness coincided with her wanting a change of role too. She’d become typecast in a part playing a teenager, to the point where directors were only considering her for younger roles. “I felt stuck. I felt like I was not inspired by anything that was happening around me and I felt like what I really wanted to do, I was not capable of getting it. It felt like time to move.”

She decided on a move to LA where she set about learning English. Attending classes for four months, de Armas was determined to still audition for roles, even though her agents were concerned about the fact she was far from fluent at this point. She insisted, how- ever, learning lines phonetically and attending auditions as often as she possibly could.

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“I was like, ‘No! Send me places now!’ she says, mimicking some of the difficult conversations she had with her agents at the time. “There were a lot of ‘no’s’ at first but that just made me prepare more, made me keep learning the language. I didn’t understand all the idioms, the slang, the way you should say things, but it didn’t matter. I was out there and if people see you doing a good job, maybe they will remember that... I want to be in the room with the director. I want to be in the room doing something even if I don’t get it, it’s fine. I think it always adds up and it’s worse not to be called. I prefer to at least go there and say ‘hi’!”

Her determination paid off and a flurry of roles followed after she was indeed spotted at those early castings. She appeared in early roles alongside Robert De Niro (Hands of Stone) and Keanu Reeves (Exposed, Knock Knock) with Blade Runner 2049 coming soon after. In addition to Blonde and No Time to Die, de Armas can be seen in Wasp Network alongside Penelope Cruz, and The Night Clerk with Helen Hunt, both of which have recently commenced streaming. On the horizon is Deep Water with Ben Affleck, her fifth film to release this year.

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Prior to lockdown, she hadn’t stopped since arriving in LA. After filming finished on Blonde, de Armas got the call to return to Bond once more. “It was kind of a mess in my head,” she laughs, explaining how she went from playing Marilyn to Paloma in the space of just three days. “The second time I had to go back to shoot Bond, I finished filming Blonde on the Friday and started shooting No Time to Die on the Monday. It was kind of weird. I think on my first take on Bond on that Monday, I started whispering and talking like Marilyn when I spoke my first line. Cary was like, ‘woah-woah-woah! Wait a second, what is happening? Who are you?’” she laughs. “I’m sorry—this is very strange for me too,” she told Fukunaga. Struggling to break-away from a character she’d immersed herself in for over a year, it was also, she thinks, part nerves from stepping onto the set of one of the world’s most famous franchises – and her biggest set to date.

“It’s the biggest movie I’ve ever been a part of. It’s a very different approach in every sense, a big sense of responsibility too.” Her nerves were calmed, she says, having worked with Craig previously. “I was very glad [he was there] with all the nerves and pressure of going to shoot the film... It’s always very strange on the first day of a movie when you get there and it’s all new. [With Bond] there is a crew who have been making Bond movies before, so they all know each other—suddenly I am the new one!”

“To have Daniel next to me after Knives Out was a great support. It was also very funny because I remember on Knives Out, he would make comments about already training for Bond way back then. At that time, I had no idea of course I would end up filming with him on the very same project. It was crazy looking back. It was just really nice to film with him again and to have that [existing] chemistry and relationship really helped the dynamic between the two characters. He’s an incredible actor, humorous and so professional too.”

Lockdown brought some much-needed enforced rest and calm in LA, even though she is desperate to see her family, and home, in Cuba. “It’s been so hard not to see them,” she says of her family, who she says she misses desperately. LA she explains, isn’t a place she wants to stay forever. “It’s a lot, or maybe it’s just because I miss Cuba too much or something. It’s a different experience for me to be in LA.” With fame of course comes exposure and it’s clear de Armas is someone who yearns for privacy away from the screen: in fact, she’s someone who would rather fame wasn’t an outcome of her day job at all.

“It’s funny as an actor because you do what you do and you don’t think of the consequences of your job and then all of a sudden you are in the spotlight and you realise ‘Oh this is not what I wanted!’ [Fame] to me, is not the most exciting thing about my job, it never has been, at all. It is just a consequence of my job.” She compares it to her preparation for Blonde. “All that fame and that exposure was also [Marilyn’s] worst nightmare and it grew in me a lot of empathy for her and what she was going through. It was a really intense time for her.”

It’s why, when she’s not with her family or loved ones, she enjoys searching for the next part, keeping busy, reading and looking for the next story to tell—something that brings her calm. Right now, she’s heard about the rumoured sequel to Knives Out and is hoping for a call to return (“I hope this is one of those surprises that 2021 will bring for me, a phone call from Rian!”) or if not, for the right part to land.

“I’ve been reading and trying to find what’s next. I guess it’s kind of weird. We’re all living in this strange situation and the circumstances are so new and everyone’s trying to figure out what to do... that has taken some pressure out of what’s next because there is no next right now.” Will she carry on resting for a while? “No, no, I’m done with resting already!” she says. There’s another reason she can’t rest, she says, the release of No Time To Die. “The anticipation of something like this, it makes me nervous... I can’t wait!” Neither can we.