When the first trailer for the new Bond movie, Spectre, landed last month, all it left fans with were questions. “Mexico City, what were you doing there?” M asks. “What’s going on, James?” Moneypenny demands.
Well, we can answer that one. He was walking alongside an intriguing woman, both of them masked, in a Day of the Dead parade. Six seconds into the trailer you see her, Estrella, played by Stephanie Sigman, the hot Mexican actress who has joined the exalted ranks of Bond girl.
Today the mask is off, and the 28-year-old model-turned-actress is sitting at a pavement cafe in Santa Monica, California, ready to be interrogated. But she almost chokes at the first question, when asked what her favourite Bond film is. “I have seen more than one,” she says. “I just can’t remember the names. You’ll know more about Bond than me!” Well, yes and no. The secrecy around the new film’s plot is probably only paralleled by real MI6 operations. “You know I can’t talk about it, right? It’s even worse than MI6,” she says, howling with laughter.
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Sigman is a self-professed “workaholic” who now lives in Orange County with her brother. She drives 80 miles a day to Hollywood and back. “I woke up one morning two years ago and decided I was gonna move from Mexico City to LA,” she says. “I didn’t know how to drive, but I bought a car and learnt. That’s how you do it.”
Raised in Ciudad Obregon, allegedly one of the most violent cities in Mexico (though she loyally refutes this as “bullshit”), Sigman first moved to Mexico City aged 16 to model and then to study acting. She was born to a Mexican mother and an American father who scouts for the New York Yankees baseball team, and she couldn’t speak English fluently when she arrived in America in 2013. “When you need something to realise your dreams...” she pauses, searching for the right word, “it becomes a necessity.” In 2010 she auditioned for America’s Next Top Model, but walked out, blaming bullying by other contestants over her Mexican heritage. Then in 2011 she starred in the well-received Mexican movie Miss Bala, and in 2013 the American TV series The Bridge. Despite all this, she is rarely recognised in her home country. “A few people stop me in the street, but nothing crazy,” she says. “I’m comfortable with that.”
That could change, however, with her roles in Bond and a new Netflix series, Narcos, which became available exclusively to its users worldwide on Friday. Already hyped as one of the most arresting shows to hit our screens since Breaking Bad, the drama explores the complex sociopolitical history of drug cartels in Colombia, responsible for the 1980s global cocaine boom. “Have you seen it?” she asks. “It’s really dark.” Sigman plays the TV reporter Valeria, a character based on the celebrity journalist Virginia Vallejo, who became the mistress of Pablo Escobar, ringleader of Colombia’s criminal underworld. She initially auditioned to play Pablo’s wife, but scored the much more powerful role of Valeria instead — a woman who helps to buy Pablo access to Congress in Colombia and corrupt the government. It is a role that made her “extra happy”. “I’ve always played victims before now,” she says, shrugging. “Valeria likes the fact that Pablo is dominating her, but she’s letting him.”
As a comic-book nerd, Sigman would really like to play a superhero. “I’m like a little boy,” she says, talking up her hobbies of boxing and skateboarding. “I want to be Spider-Woman. She’s supersexy.” She shows off her iPhone background picture — of Spider-Woman. “I have Spider-Man and Spider-Woman outfits at home.” For Halloween? “Um, yeah,” she says, unconvincingly.
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So far, playing a fictional Virginia Vallejo is the closest she has got. “She is this superwoman. I read her book. She is ambitious, speaks five languages, supersmart. What isn’t sexy about that?” Sigman decided against meeting the real-life Vallejo, who was granted asylum and now lives in Miami after helping the US Department of Justice bring the cartel accomplices to trial.
Narcos is Sigman’s second cartel-related undertaking, with Miss Bala the first. “It’s no coincidence I’m doing drugs projects,” she says. “Drugs are everywhere. It’s the world we live in.” Despite her frustrations with the press depicting her hometown in Mexico as violent, she admits: “There are many sad things about our country. You have to be careful, but Obregon is pretty safe.” (This is subjective: in a recent list of cities with the highest murder rates in the world, by a Mexican NGO, it is ranked the fourth most dangerous in Mexico.)
Narcos was shot in Colombia with an international cast and doesn’t glamorise the likes of Escobar, with the director Jose Padilha using a hybrid of real footage and fictional drama. “It’s not about chicks and jewels,” Sigman says. Conversely, Spectre presumably is about chicks and jewels. She was still living in Mexico City when she was first invited to audition as Estrella, but her role wasn’t announced officially until March of this year. “When I sent the tape to London, I thought, ‘They’ll want a pretty blonde girl.’ Whatever. I’m not the beautiful girl.” She soon forgot about it. Then a call came. The director Sam Mendes wanted to meet her in London within a month to proceed. “It was so fast. Mr Mendes knew what he wanted.” And what he wanted was a modern Bond girl.
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Her filming schedule didn’t cross with that of her co-star Monica Bellucci, but Sigman is a big fan of the celebrated actress, who, at the age of 50, is the eldest Bond “girl” yet. “I’m gonna meet her at the premiere and ask for a selfie!” she says.
Sigman is charmingly clueless about Bond’s fan-fuelled rumour mill. “Strangers say to me, ‘You’re the girl who’s going to get killed.’ And I’m like, ‘What? Oh, the film! You scared me!’” She quickly dismisses the spurious aspersions that she was cast to help secure a cheaper filming deal in Mexico City. “Sometimes people talk because they have a mouth,” she says, laughing. “My mum sent me another story that said, ‘Stephanie is the first Bond girl with no boobs.’” She bangs the table in hysterics. “That one’s true, but ha-ha-ha!”
Somewhat biased, she cites Daniel Craig as her choice of a perfect Bond, and says there were no problems with their on-screen chemistry. “On set I make it work, but in life it’s another story,” she says, alluding to the trials of being single.
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James Bond aside, Sigman isn’t short of attention from British males. Take one Arctic Monkey named Alex Turner, for instance, who last year surreptitiously invited her to star in one of their music videos [Snap Out of It] after sitting next to her on a plane. “Isn’t he hot?” she says. “I’ll tell you a great story. It’s 100% real.” Sigman was plonked next to the rock star on a flight to Norway and had no idea who he was. “He had a particular look, like a character from another planet. I asked him about the ring he was wearing and he told me he was in a band. He was very humble.” She wrote down the name Arctic Monkeys. “Six months later, their video producer called my agent and asked if I’d do the video. Well, I had listened to their music after the flight. I was impressed.”
As we are about to leave, she tells me she’s going straight out on a date. Getting up from her chair, she manages to spill some of her very green juice on her very white vest. “Ayyy! I should go home and change,” she says, pressing the green further into her shirt. “Actually, f*** it. I won’t change for anyone.”
On this current form, why would she?
Narcos is available exclusively on Netflix now