ATHENS, Greece—“I think Daniel Craig is a brilliant James Bond,” Pierce Brosnan, former 007, declared when a reporter asked him to comment on some people’s opinion that Craig is the second-best James Bond actor, while Sean Connery is the all-time best to have played Ian Fleming’s super agent.

“He really is,” Pierce, barefoot and sipping Coke at the Lagonissi Grand Resort, said of Daniel, the current 007. “I know the man—we’re good mates, and we have hung out together. But, there’s only one James Bond, and that is Connery. The rest of us are all just ‘kind of’ James Bond, but Connery’s the real one. I don’t know what number I am. I might be No. 3 or No. 4, but I prefer not to be a number. I’m a free man.” Ten points for the man—he sure aced that question!

Challenge

Still, it was a challenge for Pierce—or anyone, for that matter—to concentrate on the interview when the setting was this magnificent. Beyond the private resort villa’s main room, where the interview was conducted, a sparkling pool and sea beckoned. “I just watched a guy—he almost fell in the pool,” the actor reported to the writers who were facing him. Trying to avoid being distracted by the great view, Pierce pleaded to the reporters: “Cut me off. Don’t let me ramble, please!”

Tackling his first singing role in “Mamma Mia!,” the delightful movie adaptation of the Abba musical, Pierce welcomes this opportunity to be in a movie that is worlds apart from his James Bond blockbusters. He added with relish, “I’m the last man you expect to see in this musical—from an M16 man to someone in spandex and tights, flouncing around with a couple of boys who are also in spandex and tights!”

He was referring to Colin Firth and Stellan Skarsgard—he and the two actors playing the three former boyfriends of Meryl Streep’s character, Donna—who appear with the rest of the cast in outrageous, skintight ’70s costumes during the film’s “curtain call” scene (don’t leave the moviehouse after the film has ended—or else, you’ll miss this wonderful bonus).

We’ll never see James Bond break into Abba songs like “Our Last Summer,” “Voulez-Vous,” “SOS” and “When All Is Said and Done,” which Pierce gets to do in the movie—but, he can’t get away from the 007 connection. While the film was shot mostly in spectacular island locations here in this Mediterranean tourist mecca, some scenes were filmed in England’s Pinewood Studios, where Pierce shot his Bond movies.

Sweet irony

He volunteered: “When I got the job, I asked, ‘Where are we shooting?’ They said Pinewood,” Pierce shared. “I thought, ‘What a sweet irony this is!’ It was great to walk in that door the first morning and kind of kick all the ghosts aside. I thought, ‘Oh God, don’t give me the same dressing room—that’s going to be some mad time warp! Luckily, there we were in the Stanley Kubrick Building. I had this beautiful dressing room. I drew the drapes and there were 007’s infamous, glorious numbers on that big, old tin shed!”

Asked to recount the shooting of the curtain-call scene, Pierce complied with gusto, reflecting how much fun he had with the cast, which includes Christine Baranski, Julie Walters, Amanda Seyfried and Dominic Cooper. “It was such a great gag!” he began. “We wanted it in the movie because it was in the musical. It was in and out of the script; the studio wanted to do it and then, they didn’t want to do it. But, we all said, ‘You’ve got to do it!’ After all, the three of us have come this far down the road.

“So, we had to get measured for those outrageous costumes. Lady Ann Roth (costume designer) doesn’t pull any punches. You think, maybe we could have a bit more padding here (he pointed at his crotch, to laughter)?

“We shot the scene after the movie was all done. We had to go to Pinewood one day. I thought, this is going to be hysterical. We had to learn a little dance. We were in jeans and then, we went back to our dressing rooms. I thought we were going to do it pretty quickly, but we waited all day to do it. The day wore on, and the costume hung in the closet looking at you, and you thought, ‘Oh God, I have to get into it. This is real!’

“Then, the time finally came to get into the costume, and I said to the dressers, ‘No, thank you, but I’ll do this by myself.’ So, I managed to get into it. I checked myself out in the mirror. I looked like I had a toilet seat around my neck. I thought, that’s it—I’m in the crap on this one.

“The three of us were mincing on those platform shoes down the corridors of Pinewood Studios. I thought this would be a great time to bump into Daniel Craig (laughter). I’d have to be butch. I’d say, ‘How are you doing, Danny boy? You got this to look forward to! I hope you have a sense of humor about life.’ He does. Anyway, I didn’t bump into Dan, but the image went through my mind—the irony of it all!

Dance numbers

“When the three of us got onto the set, there were howls of laughter. It was the only time where the three of us got a little twitchy, because the boots hurt. Once everybody got over the silliness of the gag, you’re stuck in the costume, and you try to look good and be butch. You’re trying to remember the bloody dance numbers—and you can’t! I said, ‘No, hang in there!’ It was a cracking ending, I have to say.”

Pierce clearly has put the Bond issue behind him. On this sunny afternoon, he talked more freely and with humor about this chapter in his life. Many observers felt that he could have done a few more installments of the series, but the Broccolis—holders of the successful Bond franchise—launched a search for the next guy, who ended up being Daniel Craig.

“I’ve been an actor for 30 odd years, but of course the significance of the James Bond role and the great success it brought me, I will forever be grateful for,” Pierce mused. “I knew going in that I would have my hands full, but if I was in any way successful in it, I was going to have the mantle and stamp of this man. I grew up watching Connery struggle and strive to pull away from it—you can’t, you know. You make peace with it, you celebrate it—and you move on. That’s the simple version of it. Then, you have to challenge yourself to find other characters that will transform you slowly, and bit by bit. To do that, you must have patience, stamina and endurance.”

Image

He added: “The Bond movies gave me the great foundation to go off, put up a company and make my own movies. If I didn’t, people probably weren’t going to come to me. I’ve had to fight for every job I’ve gotten. But, this is a delicious time. I was in ‘The Matador,’ a delightful, subversive mangling of my image.”

And now, Brosnan is in “Mamma Mia!,” which was brought to the big screen by the same people who originated the hugely successful stage musical: Director Phyllida Lloyd, writer Catherine Johnson, producer Judy Craymer, and of course, Abba’s Benny Anderson and Bjorn Ulvaeus, who also served as executive producers.

“It was challenging, but I had the time of my life doing it,” Pierce admitted. “Colin and I came on the same plane a couple of nights ago, and he said, ‘I think that was the best summer of my life.’ I replied: ‘I agree with you.’ And I really do! When you make friends with people like Stellan and Colin—men whom you admire—and then, you add to that Meryl Streep, life doesn’t get better than that, really. You wrap it all up in Abba’s music and the movie’s beautiful story.”

He revealed the person who helped him muster the guts to sing songs like “When All Is Said and Done,” his main song: “I had a great man in Martin Lowe, the musical director. He was steadfast and patient with me and everyone else. He gave me the strength and courage to get up there, open my mouth and sing.

“We had five weeks of rehearsals,” he recalled. “I listened to the music, and that’s how I did it. That was my process. I had sung in a film before. I made the movie, ‘Evelyn,’ so I knew I had some kind of voice. That gave me confidence. I never asked Judy, Phyllida or Catherine why they cast me. I was too scared to ask—they might change their mind! I just thought, leave that one alone—you’re cast, and you’re in the movie.”

Another question that elicited a detailed and poignant recollection from the actor involved how his casting as Sam Carmichael in “Mamma Mia!” had some coincidences with his stepfather, the late Bill Carmichael, who raised Pierce as his real son (his biological father, Thomas Brosnan, left the family when Pierce was only 2).

Wonderful dad

“I was at my mother’s house one night,” he shared. “My dad, Bill, had just passed away a few days earlier. He was a great Scotsman and a wonderful dad to me. I was sitting there with my mother, May, and the priest. I said, ‘We got to have bagpipes for dad tomorrow when we send him off to heaven!’ Then, I went outside to stretch my legs. I was out in the garden, thinking about my dad when the phone went off, and it was my agent who said, ‘We got a job for you—Meryl Streep, Greece, ‘Mamma Mia!’ I said, ‘I’m in!’

“The next day, we had the funeral, and we sent dad off to heaven—bagpipes and everything. I stayed in London to meet the producers. I went to ‘Mamma Mia!,’ the play, the next night with my mother and children. I sat there at the Prince Edward Theatre. The musical started, and I thought, ‘Oh my God, what have I said yes to? Oh, dear. I had to keep thinking, ‘I am working with Meryl, I’m working with Meryl.’

“Then, Charlotte, my daughter, asked, ‘Who are you playing?’ I said, ‘I don’t know, actually.’ I forgot to ask. It turned out that I was playing one of the dads, Sam Carmichael—and my dad’s name was Bill Carmichael! And, in the play, Sam says something about bagpipes. I looked at my mother and went, ‘My God, Carmichael, and I was that close to changing my name from Brosnan to Carmichael when I left drama school. That’s how I got the job. It was quite poignant!”

E-mail rvnepales_5585@yahoo.com and read his blog, “The Nepales Report,” on http://blogs.inquirer.net/nepalesreport.