Why One Rumor About the Next James Bond Was a Straight-up Hoax

What we talk about when we talk about James Bond casting rumors is often a mixture of wishful thinking and breathless guessing. While oddsmakers tend to juice the online rumor mill with betting averages about hypothetical betting odds for various names, those reports are utterly unconnected to anything happening behind the scenes at Amazon MGM. The other side of Bond casting rumors tends to originate with tips and reports from legit entertainment journalists, often starting with Deadline, Variety, The Hollywood Reporter, and elsewhere. All Bond casting rumors should be taken with several grains of salt (or sips of a chilled martini, shaken, not stirred), but in late 2025, it turns out one rumor wasn't just false, and upon further investigation, a straight-up hoax.

Turns out, actor Scott Rose-Marsh did not read sides from GoldenEye for Bond producers Amy Pascal and David Heyman, nor did he read for director Denis Villeneuve. And although Deadline reported on the story initially last August (and here at Men's Journal, we analyzed the nature of the alleged audition material), it has been confirmed that this story was a hoax perpetrated by AI.

Some weekend fun: the inside story of a fairly elaborate hoax that succeeded in putting an unknown ginger actor in the frame to play James Bond. A tale that says stuff about our attention economy, but also features a silly faked script. https://t.co/nTCL9DQMwG

— Jake Kanter (@Jake_Kanter) January 10, 2026

"A well-placed person eventually confirmed that the Knight 'script' [which Rose-Marsh had been said to have read] was a fabrication," Jake Kanter has revealed in a Deadline piece. "What’s more, Rose-Marsh never tested for Bond."

Essentially, Kanter followed a trail of breadcrumbs from an initial scoop that seemed real, but ultimately came from a source named "Michael Lawrence," who Kanter later suspected was bolstered by AI. That said, Rose-Marsh is very real, and initially, when asked about the supposed audition, had said that "I can’t confirm or deny."

But now, as Kanter's new Deadline report reveals, we can put this rumor on the dead list. Rose-Marsh didn't mind keeping his name in the conversation, but, as of this writing, he didn't read Steven Knight's top-secret script, and he didn't read pages from the 1995 script for GoldenEye.

As Kanter points out, we might be getting some confirmed James Bond casting news sometime in 2026. But for now, all casting rumors that don't come straight from MGM, Amazon, Denis Villeneuve, or the ghost of Ian Fleming should be assumed to be a plot, created by an enemy agent designed to confuse us.