Having first worked with Pierce Brosnan eleven years
previously (Nancy Astor, BBC 1984), I was looking forward to seeing him again and being involved
with what was Pierce's first film as James Bond. The Leavesden studios,
formerly the Rolls Royce factory near Watford, were used to create the
various glamorous scenes: a casino; the jungle; a satellite tracking
station and the streets of St Petersburg. The whole thing was directed by
the remarkable Martin Campbell who was delightfully mad with an
unpredictable edge to his sense of humour – which
delighted me!
The principal accent needed was Russian and the work was not as straightforward as it might seem since each of the principal actors had their own native accent when speaking English and therefore needed to make their own individual adjustments in order to seem Russian. The cast included the French actor, Tchéky Karyo (Mishkin); a German actor, Gottfried John (Ourumov); a Polish/Swedish actor, Izabella Scarupco (Simonova); a Scottish actor, Alan Cumming (Boris Grischenko); an American actor of Dutch descent, Famke Janssen (Xenia Onotopp) and there were others. Sean Bean, who is originally from Sheffield in the North of England played 006 and we worked together to produce the British public school educated accent.
Two interesting points to note regarding word choices that we made during the course of filming: when Onotopp was losing when gambling in the casino scene, she used an expletive, "Blee-yach!" which Bond immediately recognised. Bond then identified her as coming from Georgia. Xenia Onotopp was supposed to have grown up in that part of Russia which is where she would have acquired this word which she used on a number of occasions during the movie.
After discussions with Sean Bean, it was decided that in the armoured train scene 006 would use the word 'restaurateur' rather than the more recently accepted "restauranteur" since, as someone who had had that kind of education and was a sophisticated British secret agent would automatically use the former pronunciation. – Andrew Jack, April 2001
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