Daniel Craig finally found out about his iconic weekend meme but how did it genuinely take him this long?
You’ve almost definitely seen the meme: taken from his stint as Saturday Night Live host, Craig introduces musical guest The Weeknd by saying, “Ladies and gentlemen, The Weeknd.” Depending on how you view it, he delivers the line with a genuine flourish or an exhaustive sigh. It could go either way.
The line soon became co-opted by the internet as a popular way of marking the end of the work week, essentially becoming ‘Thank God It’s Friday’ for Gen Z.
Amazingly, the clip comes from March, 2020, yet it still remains immensely popular. I follow a Twitter account that literally just posts once each Friday with the meme. That’s it and it’s the highlight of my Friday afternoon Twitter feed scroll.
The Weeknd himself discovered the meme and referenced it but it took the older Craig a little longer to find out. When being interviewed by The New York Times, he was asked if the meme had impacted him in any way. When Craig responded cluelessly “No, what is that?”, reporter Dan Itzkoff explained the whole thing to him and the James Bond star seemed genuinely pleased.
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“They do? It’s amazing,” he said. “I don’t know what that is, but thank you. That’s lovely. I suppose I’d have to have social media to know what that was all about.”
As you can imagine, the rest of the interview mostly covered Craig’s final outing as Bond in No Time to Die but it begs the question: what will live longer in the public imagination, The Weeknd meme or his 5 007 films? There’s truly only one winner.
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Check out the trailer for No Time to Die:
