Bond film team scouted Freswick
Register for free to read more of the latest local news. It's easy and will only take a moment.
JAMES Bond nearly came to Caithness in his latest screen outing.
The fact was revealed by writer and director Murray Watts who is based at Freswick Castle and was subject to a gag order after meeting the location scout for the recently released 23rd film in the Bond franchise Skyfall.
Watts met the film’s location scout Duncan Muggoch in March last year to show him around the castle, which is built on the foundations of a 12th century Viking settlement. Muggoch was very impressed with what he found at the coastal keep, just off the A99 to John O’Groats.
The scout put the idea forward to director Sam Mendes as one of the candidates for the globe-trotting MI6 agent’s grand finale which is set in Scotland.
“I was sworn to secrecy about this until the film came out,” Mr Watts told the John O’Groat Journal yesterday.
“Freswick Castle is on the Highland Film Commission’s location list and so they rang me and told me there was a significant action film interested in the castle. I ended up talking to the location scout over the phone and he came up to see me on March 1 last year. He loved the location and said he was looking for a feeling of remoteness in a Scottish property and he especially liked the fact that there was a ruined wing.”
When Mr Watts enquired for which film the location was being looked at, Muggoch told him it was the latest Bond film featuring Daniel Craig – but bound him to secrecy until the film was released.
Being involved in the entertainment business himself, having penned many plays as well as TV and film scripts over the last three and half decades, Mr Watts keenly observed the vow of silence until seeing the film in Thurso last week.
“I had quite a correspondence with the location scout following our meeting and he wrote to me to say that Freswick Castle was quite high on the list that the team wanted to see,” said the local director who also owns the property and maintains it with the Wayfarer Trust. “But they never did come and they ended up looking very seriously at Duntrune Castle in Argyll.”
Eventually filming for the final countryside scenes of Skyfall took place in Glencoe while a Scottish-style manor house was built from scratch in Surrey. Mendes and his team then used crafty editing to blend it all together in the final cut.
“It was really fun watching the film and knowing that if the dice had fallen a different way then it might have been a very exciting connection to Caithness,” said Mr Watts. “It just goes to show that there are always these possibilities lurking around.”
Mr Watts, who is a keen patron of the arts in the far north, said even one big movie being filmed in the county would benefit a lot of people.
“Quite apart from the fun of it all, I was thinking it would be great for the county’s economy in terms of revenue as a seriously big film crew would have come up here if it had happened,” he said.
“Without giving too much away about the film, there was a definite murmur of appreciation in Thurso Cinema the other night when Bond is planning his trip to Scotland and mentions going up the A9,” said Mr Watts. “People really enjoyed that.”
