Brian Cox initially thought he was signing on for a James Bond movie instead of a reality show

He may not have achieved his dream of being a big-screen Bond villain just yet, but Brian Cox is certainly antagonizing at least the marketing department behind his new 007-themed reality show.

In a recent appearance on The Tonight Show With Jimmy Fallon, Cox revealed that he only signed up to appear on 007: Road To A Million—a sort of secret agent-flavored takeoff of The Amazing Race—because he thought he’d get to clink glasses with whatever “thirty-something” eventually lands the franchise’s titular role. “Well, you see, it was called 007: Road To A Million, I thought it was the new James Bond film,” he said. “So I said, ‘Oh, finally they’re getting me in a James Bond movie.’ So I thought, ‘Yes, of course!’”

Producer Barbara Broccoli recently said she hasn’t started planning the franchise’s future yet, so there won’t even be a film for Cox to star in for quite a while. For now, the Succession alum features on the upcoming Prime Video show as “The Controller,” a vaguely ominous figure who decides “where the pairs go, what they must do, and sets their questions” to advance the competition. “I put real people into a James Bond adventure to win a million pounds,” Cox says in Logan Roy on his best behavior mode in a teaser for the show. “The only thing standing in their way is me.”

“For years, I thought, ‘Yeah, I’d love to be a James Bond villain. It’d be really interesting.’ And I thought, ‘This is my moment.’ But it wasn’t,” Cox continued on The Tonight Show.

Still, Cox found a way to dry his tears, both through the “enormous amount of money” the show paid him, and one very special quality of his role that he gushed about to Fallon. “It was great fun,” he said. “I love bossing people around, so that’s what I did. I bossed all these people around and they went through amazing [journeys]. It’s a really good show, I urge you to watch it.”

007: Road To A Million premieres November 10 on Prime Video.