Idris Elba Responds to All Those James Bond Rumors

Following the e-mail leak in which Pascal said “Idris should be the next Bond,” Elba took to Twitter to post the above response, including a selfie in which he looks a bit more scruffy and silly than usual. His post comes not long after radio personality and total tool Rush Limbaugh expressed his unhappiness at the thought of a person of color taking on the role of James Bond. Limbaugh voiced his opinion that James Bond should always be played by a white and Scottish actor, which is ridiculous since current 007 Daniel Craig is British and former Bond Pierce Brosnan is Irish.

The James Bond series has a long history of picking new actors to take on the role of the secret agent, similar to the Jack Ryan series of films, which continually chooses new actors to play the CIA agent and badass. But both franchises also have something else in common: a person of color has never been cast as either James Bond or Jack Ryan. In recent years, comic books have made Spider-Man black and turned Thor into a woman, advancing progressive ideals in the community—although fans were quick to protest a couple of years back when some suggested that Donald Glover could play Spider-Man on the big screen. When it comes to movies, it seems that fans would prefer for their traditionally white characters to remain white.

There’s no rule, however, that says that our franchise heroes should always be white, and it would be exciting to see someone like Elba—who is great at playing charismatic, suave and badass characters—play an iconic role like James Bond.

The upcoming Bond film ‘Spectre,’ is scheduled to hit theaters on November 6, 2015.