20 Things You Didn’t Know About GoldenEye (1995)
5. “I Hear The New M Is A Lady.”
Dame Stella Rimington was appointed as the first female Director-General of MI5 in 1992, having overseen the British Security Service’s move to Thames House in 1990 and visited Moscow in December 1991 to establish friendly relations between British intelligence and their Soviet counterparts, the KGB.
It is widely thought that the decision to cast Dame Judi Dench as the new M rested in this real-life event. However, former Miss Moneypenny, Lois Maxwell suggested appointing a female M when Cubby Broccoli informed her that A View to a Kill (1985) would be her last Bond film given Roger Moore’s departure from the franchise. Maxwell suggested that she be promoted to the position of M, but the filmmakers considered that audiences would not accept Bond taking orders from Miss Moneypenny.
Martin Campbell felt that, in the post-Cold War world, the idea of a female M was a good one, as it helped to modernise Bond and prove that he was not quite the “sexist, misogynist dinosaur” or the “relic of the Cold War” that his superiors felt he was.
Some die-hard fans of the franchise strongly resisted the idea of a woman playing Double-0 Seven’s boss, until they saw Judi Dench in the finished film.