Daniel Craig, the famous English actor who has endeared himself to audiences around the world as the former James Bond, talked about filming in Greece during the screening of his latest film Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery, which closed this year’s BFI London Film Festival.
The film is a follow-up to the 2019 hit Knives Out. The new film sees Daniel Craig reprising his role as detective Benoit Blanc.
The plot surrounds tech billionaire Miles Brown, who invites his friends for a getaway on his private Greek island. When someone turns up dead, Detective Benoit Blanc is put on the case.
“It’s just wonderful to be here at the London Film Festival on the closing night,” the Bond star said.
“Especially with the standard of film this year, which has been so amazing—to be in that number is just exceptional,” he added.
The rest of Glass Onion’s ensemble cast includes Edward Norton, Kate Hudson, Jamie Lee Curtis, and Janelle Monae.
Filming in Greece ”an amazing experience” for Daniel Craig
In discussing his experience shooting his new film in Greece, the Bond star had nothing but positive things to say about the country.
“I mean, it was an amazing experience,” Craig said at the BFI London Film Festival.
“We were under lockdown, so we were kind of restricted in our movements so we couldn’t really go very many places,” he said.
He added that “it was about 150 degrees in the shade, but, you know, those are high-class problems.”
In a recent interview with KFTV, Craig also said that he “enjoyed the experience of shooting in Greece, which is a beautiful country. The locals were very supportive and we managed to all work together well, despite COVID.”
Kate Hudson, who plays a former supermodel turned designer also said that filming in Greece was a great experience.
“It was good fun, with a lot of hard work in between, you know?” she said.
“But we were a good work-hard, play-hard cast, so we were very well suited for each other, [and] we had really good times,” she added.
“It was COVID, so it kind of forced us to have to play with each other for three months, so we ended up getting really close and it was really fun,” she said.
The film is screening in London following its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival. Early reviews of the film have been positive. In 2021, Netflix paid for two Knives Out sequels in a deal worth almost four hundred million dollars.
Actor Daniel Craig has told Sky News he had an 'amazing' time while filming 'Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery' in Greece.
The European premiere of the Knives Out sequel took place at the London Film Festival on Sunday evening.https://t.co/PAiZ4D1jU3 pic.twitter.com/Uzz6hbQIbe
— Sky News (@SkyNews) October 16, 2022
Daniel Craig’s new film was shot in Porto Heli and Spetses
Production for Craig’s new film took place in the summer of 2021 in Greece.
The main setting of the film was Porto Heli (also spelled Porto Cheli). The film’s director, Rian Johnson, discovered the Aman Resorts’ Villa 20 in Porto Heli and decided to use it as a major filming location. It also housed the cast and their families for the majority of the shoot, which Johnson described as “a summer vacation where we also made a movie.”
The town of Porto Heli is a popular summer resort town in the municipality of Ermionida in the southeastern part of Argolis in the Peloponnesian peninsula of Greece.
It is situated on a beautifully-shaped bay of the Argolic Gulf about six kilometers (four miles) south of the town of Kranidi and forty kilometers (twenty-five miles) southeast of Nafplio. The island of Spetses is located south of Porto Heli.
There are ferry connections from Porto Heli to the islands of Spetses, Hydra, and Poros, and to Ermioni and Piraeus. Furthermore, there is a small private airport, Porto Cheli Airport, south of the town.
Filming continued on the island of Spetses throughout July 2021. The shoot moved out of Greece on July 30th and officially wrapped up on September 13, 2021.
New film features Greek-Filipino actor Dave Bautista
Greek-Filipino actor Dave Bautista will also be featured in Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery. The actor will play Duke Cody, a YouTube star and men’s rights activist.
In an interview with Slash Film, the actor said about the new film that “it feels terrifying. I’m nervous about it. I’m really nervous.”
Though Bautista has been acting for years, most notably in the Guardians of the Galaxy franchise, he mostly specializes in action roles. In the new Knives Out film, the actor combines comedic timing and different acting skills. He previously stated that the film will take his career in a new direction.
Greek Reporter interviewed Dave Bautista about his Greek heritage. See the full interview below.
The actor admitted that though he is tremendously proud of his Greek background, he hasn’t yet been to Greece. “I want to go to Greece so bad…I’m embarrassed to say I’ve never been.”
Bautista’s mother is of Greek origin. The actor shared that part of the reason he was a little more connected to his Filipino heritage was because he grew up more with his father’s side of the family.
However, he seems set on maintaining Greek culture in his family, and this is perhaps the reason he named his daughter Athena.
Greece turns into a Hollywood movie hub
Greece is becoming the Hollywood of Europe, as it’s rapidly emerging as the movie industry’s favorite European film destination for high-end productions.
Despite the uncertainty that the COVID-19 pandemic brought, Greece keeps housing major Hollywood film productions.
In 2021 alone, over eighteen international film productions chose Greece as a filming location. Antonio Banderas and Kate Bosworth filmed the Millennium Media’s noir thriller The Enforcer in Greece. David Cronenberg’s upcoming sci-fi thriller, Crimes of the Future, was also filmed in Greece, and the list of projects goes on.
Panos Kouanis, President and CEO of Greece’s National Centre of Audiovisual Media and Communication (EKOME) said that “in less than five years, Greece has become one of the top destinations for filming not only in Europe but also worldwide.”
“Particularly in 2021, more than ten high-budget productions were filmed in Greece—for Amazon, Netflix, Paramount Studios, Apple TV, Millennium Films—as a result of the very competitive investment incentive and tax incentive that is offered,” Kouanis reported.
Earlier this summer, Nia Vardalos also chose Corfu island in Greece as the filming location for My Big Fat Greek Wedding 3.
That’s a wrap on #MyBigFatGreekWedding3! I am overwhelmed, hot tears are pouring down my face. Thank you crew, cast, producers, studio, financiers and our new friends in Varipatades, Corfu, Greece. In these difficult times we are living in, it’s appreciated when magic happens. 🧚♂️ pic.twitter.com/fVWUBSd6uX
— Nia Vardalos (@NiaVardalos) August 4, 2022
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