Dick Van Dyke could have made history as the first American to play everyone’s favorite secret agent, James Bond. But he passed up the opportunity scores of leading men would have leapt at.
“You could have almost become James Bond?” Today show host Al Roker asked the show business legend on Tuesday.
“I almost did,” Van Dyke responded. “Cubby Broccoli came to me, and said, ‘Would you like to be Bond?'”
Prolific producer Albert “Cubby” Broccoli oversaw the production of the fantastical 1968 musical Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, starring Van Dyke and adapted from the children’s story by Bond author Ian Fleming. Broccoli was also the first to usher Fleming’s Bond novels from page to screen with 1962’s Dr. No, continuing through 1995’s GoldenEye. He apparently thought the charming actor, famed for his run on The Dick Van Dyke Show, would be a perfect replacement for the outgoing O.G. Bond, Sean Connery.
But Van Dyke had one big doubt.
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“I said, ‘Have you heard my British accent?'” Van Dyke joked, adding a humorous “click” to signal that that conversation was over.
Though Van Dyke looked back on the Bond opportunity as a kind of sliding doors moment in his career, saying it would “have been a great experience,” he isn’t sure the legion of fans he’d won for family fare like Chitty or Mary Poppins would have “accepted it from me.”
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Chitty Chitty Bang Bang was released at the end of 1968. Though it wouldn’t be his last time in the role, 1967’s You Only Live Twice signaled the beginning of the end of Connery’s time as Bond.
The Scottish actor portrayed the suave officer in Her Majesty’s Secret Service for the first five films in the Bond franchise. He returned for 1971’s Diamonds Are Forever after briefly being replaced by George Lazenby, and again in 1983 in Never Say Never Again; though, that film wasn’t produced under Broccoli’s Eon Productions.
After both Connery and Lazenby were phased out, Roger Moore took over the role, tying Connery for most appearances as Bond with seven.
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Earlier this year, Broccoli’s heirs and the successive heads of Eon, Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson, ceded creative control of the Bond franchise for the first time in its six-decade history to Amazon.
After Daniel Craig’s last appearance as Bond in 2021’s No Time to Die, it’s an open question who will step next into one of Hollywood’s hottest roles and what the resulting film will look like.
Entertainment Weekly previously rounded up 15 of the best candidates for the job, but maybe Amazon ought to ask Van Dyke, who turns 100 on December 13, about his next move.