According to the new documentary Being James Bond, Daniel Craig had a major hand in shaping one of Casino Royale's most poignant moments. Throughout the franchise's long history, the Bond movies have often flipped back and forth between (relatively) grounded thrillers and over-the-top action blockbusters. Connery's Dr. No and From Russia With Love function as thrilling spy adventures with occasional action scenes, while the likes of Thunderball or You Only Live Twice really dialed up the fantasy elements.
The franchise brought things back to spy thriller territory again with George Lazenby's sole outing On Her Majesty's Secret Service. Roger Moore's era might be remembered as the most flamboyant Bond adventures, though following the delightfully cartoonish Moonraker, the producers decided to bring things literally back down to Earth for his next outing For Your Eyes Only, which largely eschewed gadgets or outlandish villains. The Pierce Brosnan era ended on a sour note with the nightmarish silly Die Another Day, and while it was a success, the producers again knew they needed a fresh start.
This launched the Daniel Craig 007 era, with Casino Royale adapting the original Ian Fleming novel of the same name. The movie has all the exotic locales and action viewers had come to expect of the franchise, but it was also a much more emotional outing too. It finds Bond at the beginning of his 00 career, where he's tasked with taking down Mads Mikkelsen's evil banker Le Chiffre with the aid of HM Treasury liaison officer Vesper Lynd. Bond and Vesper fall in love over the course of the story, and in one of the most emotional scenes, he comforts her after she helps him kill an assassin. In the new documentary Being James Bond, Craig is revealed to have had a big hand in how the scene is portrayed.
In Casino Royale's shower scene, Bond finds a traumatized Vesper Lynd (Eva Green) sitting in a shower with her clothes on, shaking in horror at having helped kill a man. Bond gets in beside her, turning up the water to keep her warm in what's one of the most tender scenes of the franchise. In Being James Bond, producer Barbara Broccoli credits it as the moment the characters fall in love and praises Craig for his input into the scene. As written, Vesper was supposed to be in her underwear, but Craig felt it unlikely the shaken Vesper would have thought to undress.
Craig also worked with Green and director Martin Campbell to draw out the emotion of the moment, including gently sucking a couple of her fingers to clean the metaphorical blood Vesper claims won't wash off. While the scene in the Casino Royale script was intended to be one of connection too, the fact Vesper was portrayed in her underwear and the line of description accompanying Bond cleaning her fingers "...of course, the non-sexual aspect is incredibly sexy" confirms it was intended to be a little titillating for viewers. Wisely, the filmmakers rejected that element.
Casino Royale also loops back to the water imagery when Vesper decides to drown herself following her betrayal of Bond in the finale. The shower scene has been praised by fans of the series and set the mission statement that Daniel Craig's era was going to be something very different. Being James Bond also showed Crag's creative input had a big impact on how the movies evolved.