When Amazon purchased the James Bond franchise in 2022, no one, including the streamer, thought Bait would be their first 007 project.
“They had natural hesitation, since anyone would, holding this priceless piece of IP, but they were so supportive and just kind of let us do it our way,” Bait showrunner Ben Karlin said on Obsessed: The Podcast.
Karlin, 54, who left his work on The Daily Show and The Colbert Report to write for narrative TV, developed the Amazon Prime series with Oscar winner Riz Ahmed well before Amazon took ownership of the iconic spy franchise.
In the six-part series, Ahmed’s character, Shah Latif, gets the audition of a lifetime when he’s asked to read for the role of James Bond. Bait follows Latif as he struggles with the public scrutiny of one of cinema’s most iconic gigs.
“It’s certainly not the Bond show that they would do if they were developing a Bond show, but it’s a very nice, complimentary piece,” Karlin admitted. “It’s like when Thom Yorke goes off and makes a cool side project. That’s definitely not Radiohead, but it still fits in the canon of that work.”
“That’s the dream, to be something that is complementary, but not really crossing over in that way,” Karlin added, saying Amazon was “incredible” in allowing them to do the version that they wanted to do.
Amazon is currently developing the 26th Bond film with Dune director Denis Villeneuve. The franchise has not yet cast its new leading man since Daniel Craig vacated the role in 2021.
Before Amazon purchased Bond, Ahmed, 43, and Karlin had to seek permission from its original owners.
“We had to go hat-in-hand to Barbara Broccoli,” Karlin noted, clarifying that Ahmed wrote a personal letter to the Bond heiress before meeting with her.
“We got her blessing, but we were pretty far down the road. We had written scripts, and it was going to be a big problem if she said, ‘No,’” Karlin admitted.
Eventually, everything fell into place, including a surprise cameo from another one of Britain’s iconic cinematic figures as—of all things—the voice of a severed pig’s head that is thrown through Shah’s window after news leaks about his audition.
“We made our list and just tried to get real about, we’re gonna take a swing at one of these people who has the most recognizable—instantly recognizable—booming voice that would also be funny when you throw in some of the insult humor that the character engages in,” Karlin said. “And it just was like, ‘It’s gotta be Patrick Stewart.’”
“It was one of the greatest thrills of my life by far, not just my career,” Karlin declared. “Just sitting in a room with him for a couple of days, recording this stuff.”
Ahmed’s character, partially based on the actor’s life, is undeniably insecure, laboring under the weight of his off-track career. Karlin admired the Oscar-nominated dramatic actor’s capacity for comedy.
“We really wanted to make sure that the character was like a warts-and-all character,” Karlin said. “And he was really, really game for presenting a version of himself that, if people thought this was who he really was, oftentimes not the most flattering portrait.”
All six episodes of Bait are currently available to stream on Amazon Prime Video.
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