Lashana Lynch

[Yohji]

Lashana Rasheda Lynch (born 27 November 1987) is a British actress. She is best known for playing the role of Rosaline Capulet in the ABC period drama series Still Star-Crossed (2017) and fighter pilot Maria Rambeau in Captain Marvel (2019).

GQ Men Of The Year Awards 2020 Red Carpet Rundown | Tom + Lorenzo

Lashana Lynch attends the 2020 Vanity Fair Oscar Party hosted by Radhika Jones at Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts on February 09, 2020 in Beverly Hills, California.

Lashana Lynch attends the 13th Annual Essence Black Women In Hollywood Awards Luncheon at the Beverly Wilshire Four Seasons Hotel on February 06, 2020 in Beverly Hills, California.

Lashana Lynch attends Alfre Woodard's 11th Annual Sistahs' Soiree Presented by Morgan Stanley With Absolut Elyx on February 05, 2020 in Los Angeles, California.

Lashana Lynch attends the 65th Evening Standard Theatre Awards at London Coliseum on November 24, 2019 in London, England.

Cast member Lashana Lynch attends the "Bond 25" film launch at Ian Fleming's home "GoldenEye" on April 25, 2019 in Montego Bay, Jamaica.

Actor Lashana Lynch attends the Los Angeles World Premiere of Marvel Studios' "Captain Marvel" at Dolby Theatre on March 4, 2019 in Hollywood, California.

Lashana Lynch attends the "Captain Marvel European Gala" held at The Curzon Mayfair on February 27, 2019 in London, England.

Actor Lashana Lynch speaks onstage during Marvel Studios' "Captain Marvel" Global Junket Press Conference at The Beverly Hilton Hotel on February 22, 2019 in Beverly Hills, California.

Actor Lashana Lynch attends the Los Angeles Global Premiere for Marvel Studios? Avengers: Infinity War on April 23, 2018 in Hollywood, California.

tomandlorenzo.com, zimbio.com​

 

[simplylovely]

Harper's Bazaar UK December 2020
"Woman of the Year"
Photography by @richardphibbs
Styled by @leithclark
MUA by @babskymakeup

Lashana Lynch covers Harper’s Bazaar UK December 2020 by Richard Phibbs

First Black female 007 Lashana Lynch shines on one limited-edition cover of December 2020 ‘’Women of the Year’’ issue of Harper’s Bazaar UK. Photographed by Richard Phibbs, she poses in a silk dress and white gold and diamond earrings from Giorgio Armani with a Awon Golding hat on the newsstand cover (above). For the subscribers cover (below), Lashana wears a Simone Rocha dress and earrings from Chanel Fine Jewellery.

The cover story, styled by Leith Clark, shows Lashana modeling selections from Roksanda, Harpern, Alexander McQueen and Celine by Hedi Slimane.

Hair: Earl Simms
Make-up: Alex Babsky
Manicure: Robbie Tomkins
Artwork: Rosanna Webster

fashionotography​

 

[simplylovely]

GQ January/February 2021
Photographer: @dannykasirye
Stylist: @luke_jefferson_day
Hair: @earlsimms2
Make up: @babskymakeup
Nails: @robbietomkins

​

Lashana Lynch: 'A black Bond would be big for my community, but I need the world to not care about it'

By Thomas Barrie30 November 2020
Taking on one billion-dollar franchise might seem daunting for an up-and-coming actor, but for Lashana Lynch two still isn’t enough. From theatre to Marvel to Bond, the first female 007 throws shade on the keyboard warriors and reveals how she saw her own future... and took it

In 2016, Lashana Lynch was filming a small TV spin-off of Romeo And Juliet called Still Star-Crossed. A seven-part series for the American network ABC, executive-produced by industry luminary Shonda Rhimes, it was the sort of substantial, mid-profile work a young actor would be grateful for, but hardly a show you’d expect the average British punter to have heard of, let alone seen. One day, during a break in filming, Lynch got talking to her fellow cast members about their career aspirations. “I remember telling them,” she recalls, “‘The next thing I want to do is play a superhero. I want to aim for Marvel.’ And they were like,” – she puts on a smug, patronising voice – “‘Uhhh, OK.’” Lynch just shrugged. “You guys don’t know me. If I say I want to walk through this wall, then I’m probably going to do it within about two years.”

This is typical Lashana Lynch: vocal, decisive and wilful. And as it turned out, she was spot on: less than a year after the series aired Lynch had been cast as Maria Rambeau, an ace US Air Force pilot, in 2019’s Captain Marvel. It wasn’t a superhero role per se – Rambeau, though kick-***, is a normal human being without powers – but it was still a major part alongside Brie Larson in a billion-dollar movie. And as for Still Star-Crossed? Cancelled, after a single series. The Marvel role had been a conscious target for a while, says Lynch. “I’d been taping for years. [Casting director] Sarah Finn at Marvel knew me in and out because I’d taped for many roles, big and small.” Which ones? “Black Panther – I won’t say [whom], because I’ve got friends in the film – Venom, an Avengers film... There were a good handful.” With Captain Marvel, she finally found her way into the world’s highest-grossing movie franchise.

When filming wrapped, she still had some time for other projects. “Working on a franchise is a whole different world,” she says. “There’s a lot of money, decisions to make, people to go through, departments to talk to... and that can get in the way of creating. So sometimes you do want to just have that little indie that you’re not really getting paid much for, but it’s going to be timeless.” In between shooting Captain Marvel and its release around the world, Lynch appeared in a play by Debbie Tucker Green at the Royal Court Theatre in London, entitled Ear For Eye. Among its producers was Barbara Broccoli, cohead of production company Eon Productions. One day, Broccoli gave Lynch a call and asked her if she’d like to tape for a role. That was about it: no names or further details. While Lynch knew that Eon only really put out one film series worth starring in – the Bond films – she had no real idea what to expect. “I definitely went into the audition thinking I could be either a walk-on or I could be M.” It was, of course, neither.


The announcement in July 2019 of Lynch’s casting as the new 007 in No Time To Die, Nomi – not as James Bond himself, as many immediately assumed – was met with the typically feverish reaction this country reserves for breaking news about the royals, football and Bond. Everyone had a take. “You can make Bond a black man – I’d love to see Idris Elba take over from [Daniel] Craig – or any other ethnic-persuasion man for that matter, but you can’t make him a woman,” declared one sagacious Daily Mail columnist. On Twitter, anonymous culture warriors offered less politely worded diatribes about “political correctness” and Bond being “hijacked”.

For Lynch, it wasn’t a surprise. “White patriarchy will always have something to say when it comes to things like that,” she says. “But the magnitude of it was ridiculous.” She speaks about the fuss as if it happened to someone else, as though she was looking on as an outsider. “I was imagining these weird-looking actual trolls with blue hair!” As in the famous troll dolls? “Yeah! On their computers, typing away.” She laughs. “For me, none of it is real. As soon as my phone is off or I’m out of the app, it quite literally doesn’t exist any more.”

Recently, in a cover story for this magazine, the actor John Boyega spoke candidly about how his experience of being involved in the Star Wars films was directly and inextricably based on his race, compared to his white cast mates. He spoke about being a symbol first, an actor second. To hear Lynch speak about her casting, it sounds like a relatable experience. More than the racist response from a few angry men on the internet, what frustrates her is the false sense of achievement about her casting that has cropped up over a now year-long press tour – elongated unnaturally by the two delays to No Time To Die’s release. She’s tired, she says, of “the fact that you have to celebrate it, like it’s this New Age thing, like black people have just arrived on the planet. That’s what annoys me about the idea of Idris Elba being ‘the black Bond’... For my community, those are really big things, but for the world, I need you to not care about it.” Nor is emphasising her role as “the first” major black woman in Bond particularly fair to the likes of Grace Jones, who played the henchwoman May Day in A View To A Kill in 1985, or Naomie Harris, who has played Moneypenny since 2012’s Skyfall. “All of the titles need to go and just focus on the job in hand: are you proud of this movie and this character? Do you relate to them? Yes. Stop. Keep it moving.”

It’s tempting to hazard that another factor in the frothing anger of the man-babies who objected to Lynch’s casting was that she visibly represents a new generation making its mark on the Bond franchise, alongside her costars, Ana de Armas and Léa Seydoux, and writer Phoebe Waller-Bridge, all of whom are aged between 32 and 35. Lynch herself is one of the most obviously millennial actors cast in Bond so far, just as likely to talk about Bond’s mental health or problematic attitude towards women and drink as his ability with a Walther PPK. Born in Hammersmith, London, in 1987 to Jamaican parents, she was first inspired to act by the animated Disney movies of the studio’s 1990s renaissance. “I felt more related to emoting through my voice,” she says. “I found it fascinating that you can take a little cartoon or a little animal and give them human-esque features and suddenly I’m drawn into the story.” Her favourite Bond film, tellingly, is Daniel Craig’s first outing, Casino Royale, which came out in 2006, when she was 18 – a brilliant film, absolutely, but hardly the likely choice of many middle-aged Bond fans. “That opening scene really stood out to me [in which Bond free-runs after a target in Madagascar, eventually chasing him up a crane]. It was one continuous, erratic, crazy scene.” When she was cast as Nomi, Lynch went back to watch every single film in the series (that’s about 53 hours’ worth of Bond, in all). Before that, her main experience of the older films had been “watching” them as a baby, on her father’s knee.

In a sense, Nomi is Lynch’s first superhero role, the culmination of that personal challenge that began with all those tapes sent in for Marvel movies, because what is 007, really, if not a superhero? Lynch paints a picture of a younger, by-the-book spy in comparison to Craig’s more freewheeling veteran. “That’s the most interesting clash that they have – that he is somewhat erratic and she’s very Type A.” Which is appropriate, because Lynch seems pretty Type A herself. She talks about the hard work and stunt preparation for her role with the relish of a perfectionist. “Say I got the part on a Monday, by Thursday they were like, ‘Right. Stand there. You’re going to do this, this and this.’” In contrast to Craig’s many well-documented injuries over five films, which have brutalised his body, Lynch doesn’t report any mishaps, which she puts down to a background in dance and athletics. When the stunt team told her she was the first person they’d worked with who didn’t pick up any injuries, she says, “I felt a bit geeky about that. I felt like they should have given me a gold sticker.” It gives a whole new weight to one of the icier moments in No Time To Die’s trailer, when a deadly serious Nomi tells Bond, “Stay in your lane.”


Lynch adopted the same head-on approach when she heard that Waller-Bridge was joining the project to punch up the script. Worried that Waller-Bridge might not have the same conception of Nomi as a character, she took matters into her own hands. After getting permission from Broccoli, she called Waller-Bridge and “word vomited” at her. “I listed all the things I saw in [Nomi] and Phoebe literally just said, ‘I see the same thing.’” They wrote a character who, according to Lynch, is capable yet vulnerable, who might not know everything, yet, but is willing “to throw everything at the wall and see what sticks”. In a detail that has since been much touted in interviews, Waller-Bridge and Lynch conceived of a moment when Nomi is on her period and tosses a tampon into a bin. Whether it made it into the final cut will become apparent next April.

It can seem, at this point, as though No Time To Die has been delayed for so long that news of Waller-Bridge’s rewrites, Lynch’s casting and some of the other revelations (case in point: that tampon scene) entered the public realm aeons ago. When, in October, Eon announced that the film was being pushed back another six months to April 2021, it caused some consternation among more than just desperate fans; many industry figures were expecting the film to revitalise cinemas, which were ailing even before the pandemic forced them to shut down. But Lynch rejects the idea that it was No Time To Die in particular that was leading the charge back into cinemas: “I don’t particularly think it was this film. There are tons of other films that were going to be out around this time of year.” She does, however, have thoughts on the -government’s response to the difficulty creative industries have faced during the pandemic.

“I’m scared for cinema and theatre,” she admits. “It’s affecting actors. We’re being told to go and seek other avenues, which is probably the most disrespectful thing you can tell a creator.” Is she specifically referring to Rishi Sunak’s call for out-of-work creatives to take up new careers and retrain? “Yeah. I think it’s ludicrous. You wouldn’t tell anyone else, in any other sector, to seek other work. We’re the bottom of the food chain, [yet] somehow ended up being the industry that saved minds during lockdown. If it wasn’t for streaming platforms and long series and old films and TV, I don’t think we would have been able to say we were OK. So that’s maddening. We can’t continue to trust the government to do the right thing.”

The fate of cinemas aside, another symptom of that year-long delay is Lynch’s now well-honed ability to dodge the obvious question to ask someone at the heart of the Bond franchise. And while she insists vocally that she doesn’t have any idea who the next actor to play Bond will be, a lie detector test that she takes as part of her GQ shoot gives a very interesting result. “I don’t [know] – and that fricking lie detector test apparently said I do. I was like, ‘No’ and they were like, ‘That’s a lie.’ Come on, man. I actually don’t!” She gestures wildly and laughs. “I love Barbara, but I don’t think she’d even tell me, right?” It’s a valid point. And in a sense, it doesn’t really matter anyway: for at least a few months more, 007 is hers.

​

gq-magazine.co.uk, dannykasirye, lashanalynch,babskymakeup​

 

[simplylovely]

 

[Yohji]

​

 

[Yohji]

Lashana Lynch attends the World Premiere of "NO TIME TO DIE" at the Royal Albert Hall on September 28, 2021 in London, England.

zimbio.com

​

 

[puresoul]

Charles Finch and Chanel dinner in the West End, 3/12/22

dailymail.co.uk​

 

[Yohji]

Lashana Lynch attends the EE British Academy Film Awards 2022 at Royal Albert Hall on March 13, 2022 in London, England.

Lashana Lynch’s Prada BAFTAs Look Is A Tribute To Black Hollywood Legends

vogue.co.uk​

 

[puresoul]

Giorgio Armani's pre-Oscars party in Beverly Hills, 3/26/22

justjared​

 

[puresoul]

Vanity Fair Oscars Party, 3/27/22​

pagesix​

 

[Yohji]

Lashana Lynch attends the screening of "Final Cut (Coupez!)" and opening ceremony red carpet for the 75th annual Cannes film festival at Palais des Festivals on May 17, 2022 in Cannes, France.

Lashana Lynch attends Marvel Studios' "Doctor Strange In The Multiverse Of Madness" premiere at Dolby Theatre on May 02, 2022 in Hollywood, California.

popsugar.co.uk​