FOR QUEEN & COUNTRY Naomie Harris’ fearless Miss Moneypenny is the latest portrayal of an iconic Bond character who now represents a more sophisticated vision of the Secret Service BY LYDIA SLATER PHOTOGRAPHS BY KOTO BOLOFO STYLED BYMARTHA WARD document253459343744583026.indd 131 21/10/2015 18:56 All prices on request except where stated. This page and opposite: Naomie Harris wears sequined silk and organza gown; metal tiara, both Elie Saab Haute Couture . Gold and diamond rings (can see??), from £3,300, Dior Joaillerie All prices on request except where stated. This page: Naomie Harris wears silk and crepe gown; embellished silk and velvet coat, both Ralph & Russo. Opposite: sequined silk and organza gown; metal tiara; metal belt, all Elie Saab Haute Couture document253459343744583026.indd 130 21/10/2015 18:56 Silk chiffon gown, £4,540, Gucci PHOTOGRAPHS: PHOTOGRAPHER NAME KOTO BOLOFO Town & Country * 132 document253459343744583026.indd 132 21/10/2015 18:56 an Fleming declared her to be his one being Kathleen Pettigrew, the formidable personal second favourite character. assistant to the MI6 director Stewart Menzies (in his initial Yet he told us almost nothing about draft of Casino Royale, Fleming rather lazily dubbed his Miss Moneypenny. We know exactly what character ‘Miss Pettaval’). Then there was Paddy Ridsdale, James Bond looks like (the American composer and singer a glamorous naval-intelligence secretary who assisted Hoagy Carmichael). We are told his height, his weight, Fleming in his counter-intelligence efforts during World Ihis blood pressure and the precise location of his scars (his War II, famously helping him to create a fictitious identity right cheek, left shoulder and right hand, on which the for a corpse disguised as a drowned British officer carrying initial for the Russian word for ‘spy’ was carved in Cyrillic papers designed to confuse the Axis powers. ‘He was always by an agent of Smersh). We are informed of his favourite wooing me with presents of silk stockings and lipstick from brands of gun, car, shirt, champagne, cigarette, even mar- strange places,’ Ridsdale once recalled of Fleming. ‘But malade (Cooper’s Vintage Oxford). I was never taken in by his charm because I knew what he But although Miss Moneypenny is a constant, if periph- was like. He was always on the telephone to different eral, presence throughout the Bond canon, the author’s women, taking them to lunch and dinner at the Ritz. He depiction of her is tantalisingly vague. In the first novel, had so many girlfriends that I was not tempted to become Casino Royale, we learn only that she ‘would have been one of them.’ It all sounds rather familiar… desirable but for eyes which were cool and direct and Another rumoured model was Joan Bright Astley, who quizzical’. In Thunderball, we are told a little more: she has organised the Special Information Centre for Winston a poodle, a crush on 007 and once worked in the cipher Churchill during World War II and, unlike Ridsdale, did department. Other meaningful details about her appear- date Fleming, later describing him as ‘attractive and fun’ ance, her history or her daily existence are kept top secret. but also ‘ruthless’. Yet her importance, especially to the dynamic of the films, Nevertheless, despite the existence of such real-life inspi- is undeniable. Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace, the two rations, Miss Moneypenny herself remains elusive. In many films in which she doesn’t appear, are the poorer for her ways, the lack of specific detail about her has proved a absence: she lends a softer, more domestic dimension to godsend for the film-makers, thus given the freedom to Bond. ‘The Bond Girls are essentially disposable,’ says interpret M’s faithful secretary according to their own Samantha Weinberg, the writer (under the pseudonym preference, and to suit the mores of the times. Kate Westbrook) of The Moneypenny Diaries, a series of novels Lois Maxwell – the Miss Moneypenny of my own child- depicting Miss Moneypenny’s own adventures in the Secret hood – played her as efficient and maternally flirtatious. Service. ‘Either he has a fling with them and gets bored, or (Interestingly, she looked rather like photographs of Paddy they die. None of them can engage him. Whereas Money- Ridsdale, and when she met Fleming on the set of Dr No, penny is the one woman who is always present in his life, says Weinberg, ‘he told her, “You’re exactly how I imagined but never gives in to him.’ Moneypenny, warm and intelligent with the most sensual Several women are said to have inspired Moneypenny, lips.”’) In order to create their on-screen chemistry, Maxwell DAVID SLIJPER Town & Country * 133 document253459343744583026.indd 133 21/10/2015 18:56 PHOTOGRAPHS: PHOTOGRAPHER NAME KOTO BOLOFO Town & Country * 134 document253459343744583026.indd 134 21/10/2015 18:57 This page: tulle and silk gown, Giambattista Valli Haute Couture. Platinum and diamond earrings, £12,600, Tiffany & Co. White gold and diamond ring, £4,200, Cartier. Opposite: jacquard dress, £4,795, Alexander McQueen. Platinum and diamond earrings, Jessica McCormack PHOTOGRAPHS: PHOTOGRAPHER NAME Town & Country * 135 document253459343744583026.indd 135 21/10/2015 18:57 Sequined silk and organza gown; metal tiara; metal belt, all Elie Saab Haute Couture PHOTOGRAPHS: PHOTOGRAPHER NAME KOTOKOTO BOLOFO BOLOFO Town & Country * 136 document253459343744583026.indd 136 21/10/2015 18:57 and Sean Connery concocted a back story for their charac- lace Burberry top and white fringed skirt and shod in spike- ters, imagining a single night of passion in a country cottage heel Burberry sandals. She is certainly beautiful – long- before they renounced each other for the call of duty. limbed and lissom, with eyes the colour of Lyle’s Golden Manning the desk in The Living Daylights and Licence to Kill, Syrup – but the overwhelming impression is of cool intelli- Caroline Bliss played her as a more traditional secretary, gence. The James Bond of the books would undoubtedly blonde, bespectacled, bun-wearing and openly needy. have found her mere presence an assault on his masculinity. Samantha Bond, Moneypenny in four fi lms opposite Pierce Harris has never been shy of taking on tough roles, having Brosnan, was sarcastic and witty, apparently independent, played a zombie-slayer in 28 Days Later, a mystical voodoo yet secretly a worshipper at 007’s well-polished brogues. witch in Pirates of the Caribbean and the controversial fi gure Naomie Harris’ Moneypenny is another creature entirely. of Winnie Mandela in the critically acclaimed Mandela: Long At the start of Skyfall, she is presented to us as a gun-toting Walk to Freedom. Consequently, when she was approached secret agent – one who shoots Bond, apparently fatally, by the director Sam Mendes, who had seen her in the before the opening credits have even rolled. National Theatre’s production of Frankenstein, and was asked Moreover, she is black. It says a good deal for Harris’ to audition for a Bond Girl role, she admits to being a little portrayal that, while mere specula- bemused. ‘I thought, “I don’t think tion about a black Bond is enough I can be a Bond Girl,”’ she says to make headlines around the with a throaty chuckle. world, Harris stepped straight into ‘MONEYPENNY Harris grew up in the Roger Moneypenny’s kitten heels without IS THE ONE Moore era, when female characters a wobble. ‘I think I was very lucky in the franchise were particularly that it was never revealed I was WOMAN WHO IS cartoonish, ‘so I always associated Moneypenny until the movie them with being very sexual and was already out,’ she says. ‘People ALWAYS PRESENT sensual, and that’s not what I didn’t have a chance to say, “Oh associate with myself. I’m really no, we don’t want a black Money- IN BOND’S LIFE uncomfortable when the label of penny,” because they didn’t know “beautiful” is put on a character. she was coming. And when they BUT NEVER It makes me feel I can’t live up to it, saw the fi lm, they thought, hope- somehow’. For in her head, Harris fully, “OK, we can live with her.” GIVES IN TO HIM’ says, she still imagines a ‘sexy’ So there were no objections, which woman to be a curvaceous blonde. I’m really happy about.’ Consequently, she went to her We have arranged to meet at Dukes hotel in Mayfair, a audition without nerves. ‘I thought, “This is good practice favourite haunt of Ian Fleming’s, which still purveys a and it’s great to meet Sam Mendes, so just go in and do world-famous martini. On my way there down St James’s it.”’ It was only on her fi nal audition that Harris was told Street, past the gentlemen’s clubs, the gun shop and the she was in fact in the running to play Miss Moneypenny. cigar merchant, I have the impression of walking back in “And I was like, “Oh, that makes sense! OK, now I get it!”’ time, into Bond’s 1950s heyday with its comfortable she says, glowing. certainties of white, male, Western supremacy. But this Further endorsement came from an MI6 operative, to impression is instantly dispelled when I fi nd Harris, closeted whom she was introduced in order to research her role. in the hotel’s pink and green Perrier-Jouët lounge, sipping ‘This person told me I would be an ideal candidate,’ she a cup of camomile tea, having fi rmly rejected anything says. ‘They said, “You’re perfect. No one would ever think shaken, stirred or sparkling. ‘I don’t drink alcohol at all, you were an agent, and people tell you more than they ever,’ she says.