James Bond Author Apologizes for Saying Idris Elba Is "Too Street" to Play 007

Anthony Horowitz, the author of the upcoming James Bond book, has issued an apology for saying Idris Elba is "too street" to play the suave superspy.

Horowitz's remarks, in which he suggested Shakespearean actor Adrian Lester as an alternative for a black Bond, quickly came under fire for being racially coded. But now, Horowitz is saying that when he called Elba "street" it was only because he had been thinking of the actor's work in the gritty cop drama Luther.

Let's put aside Horowitz's clear inability to understand the basic tenants of acting - in which the actor and the character are two completely separate things - and focus on the fact that the current author of James Bond seems to have a frustrating lack of understanding about who Bond is and who he can be. James Bond is one of the most malleable characters in literary and cinematic history. Compare the roguish Sean Connery to the aristocratic Roger Moore, or the blandly heroic Pierce Brosnan to the emotionally troubled Daniel Craig. But through all of Bond's evolutions, a few things remain the same: He's a scarred orphan who kills people for a living and finds solace in the bottom of a bottle.

And Elba and John Luther are the one's who are too street?