Lashana Lynch (ArtsEd)
July 2024
In the summer of 2019 Lashana Lynch made the headlines when she was named ‘by an industry insider’ as not only the next 007 but the first female and the first Black 007 in the James Bond franchise.
A graduate of ArtsEd’s BA (Hons) Acting course, Lashana, who graduated in 2010, has had a stratospheric career since completing her degree.
Having had a part in British TV drama series The Bill in 2007, her debut film Fast Girls (2012) saw her playing runner Belle Newman in a British drama about female athletes. The story was about two women on their path to becoming professional sprinters, and the director chose young actors who could be credible as their team mates.
Over the next four years she played roles in several well-known British TV series including Silent Witness, Death in Paradise and Doctors and she played Ashanti in Brotherhood, film sequel to Adulthood and Kidulthood – ‘a day in the life of a group of troubled 15-year-olds growing up in west London’.
From the gritty gang culture of London’s mean streets she stepped into the main cast list of an American period drama television series Still Star-Crossed, (2017). In the contemporary take on Romeo and Juliet, Lashana played Rosalind Capulet. Following the deaths of Romeo and Juliet, she is betrothed Benvolio Montague. While she’s busy trying to prevent the marriage, a war between the two families erupts around the unhappy couple.
Still Star-Crossed was dropped by the network after one series, but it represented a major boost to Lashana’s career, as it was produced by Shonda Rhimes, creator of Grey’s Anatomy and the political thriller series Scandal.
In 2019, she really hit the big time, as the ‘breakout star’ of Captain Marvel, alongside Brie Larson (in the title role), Samuel L Jackson, Annette Bening and Jude Law. The film was the third biggest grossing film of the year and the first female-led superhero film to pass the billion-dollar mark.
Lashana’s character Maria Rambeau is a mate of Captain Marvel’s, a single mother and an Air Force pilot who goes by the call sign “Photon”, who Lashana describes as “an incredible badass” and someone “that you don’t feel like you need to help”. She reprised this role in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (2022) and The Marvels (2023).
What better training for her role as 007? The Mail reported in July:
“There is a pivotal scene at the start of the film where M says, “Come in 007”, and in walks Lashana who is black, beautiful and a woman … It’s a popcorn-dropping moment. Bond is still Bond but he’s been replaced as 007.”
Filming No Time to Die (2021) in Jamaica is in one sense going back to her roots, as Lashana is of Jamaican heritage. But in another way, appearing alongside Daniel Craig, Ralph Fiennes (M), Naomie Harris (Moneypenny) and Rami Malek (villain) in one of the most successful film franchises ever must seem a long, long way from growing up in west London with ambitions to be an actor.
In 2022, she debuted in her first musical role as Miss Honey in the Broadway show film adaptation Mathilda the Musical. The sweetness of this role is a stark contrast to what is arguably her top performance as a veteran warrior in The Woman King that same year.
She kicked off 2024 with the release of the film Bob Marley: One Love that details Marley’s musical journey popularising reggae music amidst political conflict in Jamaica.
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Updated by Ciara Fitzgerald, 2024
