‘Queer’ Stars Daniel Craig, Drew Starkey on Creating Intimacy for Their Sex Scenes: “We Just Tried to Make It as Real and Natural as We Possibly Could”
Local Italian hero Luca Guadagnino swept into the Venice Film Festival Tuesday to debut his much-anticipated erotic period drama, Queer, starring Daniel Craig and Drew Starkey as fleeting lovers in 1950 Mexico City.
Craig, speaking at the film’s first press conference in Italy, described the process of building a rapport with Starkey to shoot the film’s quite graphic sex scenes, noting that they began by rehearsing some choreography together months before shooting kicked off.
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“Dancing with someone is a great icebreaker,” Craig explained. “We all know there’s nothing intimate about filming a sex scene on a movie set — there’s a room full of people watching you — so we just wanted to make it as touching, real and natural as we possibly could.”
“Drew is just a wonderful, fantastic, beautiful actor to work with, and we just kind of had a laugh,” Craig added. “You know, we tried to make it fun.”
Queer‘s red carpet premiere marks a triumphant return to the Lido for Guadagnino after his previous feature, the sexy tennis thriller Challengers, was forced to pull out as Venice’s opening movie last year due to delays related to the Hollywood actors’ strike. Queer is already generating major buzz as both a potential Golden Lion contender and Hollywood awards season prospect, with Venice’s artistic director Alberto Barbera describing Craig’s performance as “career-defining.”
The film is an adaptation of William S. Burroughs’ now-classic novel about an American expat (Craig) in 1950s Mexico City who develops a passionate preoccupation with a young student (Drew Starkey). The supporting cast includes Lesley Manville, Jason Schwartzman, Andra Ursuta, Michael Borremans and David Lowery. Challengers screenwriter Justin Kuritzkes reunited Guadagnino to pen the adaptation.
For his part, Starkey said that the movement rehearsals and dance sequences with Craig “freed us up and freed our bodies” and allowed them to be open to try new things. “When you’re rolling around on the floor with someone, the second day of knowing each other, it’s a good way to get to know someone.”
Starkey credited choreographer Paul Lightfoot for helping the two find their footing. “We had months of this experimenting with each other,” he said, turning his attention to praise Guadagnino. “Then we had a couple weeks of really just exploring. Luca also allows that space for that to happen. He invites it and welcomes it. It’s such a singular experience as an actor. I’ve never had an experience like this.” He then got laughs for saying that despite the dance sequences, he’s not a dancer and “Dan is definitely not a dancer — but I think we learned and got better together.”
An awkward moment unfolded in the press conference when an Australian journalist broached the subject of Craig moving so far away from the James Bond franchise with a starring role in Queer. Did he have any reservations about that choice and did he think there could ever be a gay James Bond?
Guadagnino shook his head and dismissed the question. “Guys, let’s be adults in the room for a second,” he said. “There is no way around the fact that nobody would ever know James Bond’s desires — period.”
The filmmaker then used the questions as a way to praise his leading man. “I have been an admirer of this gentleman for a long time,” he said, adding that he had an intuition that “suffocated within me” that he wanted to work with him but he tried to focus on reality by telling himself “you have to make movies and not daydream.”
Though he didn’t mention him by name, he credited a man standing in the room — CAA agent Bryan Lourd — for being the key to making the casting happen. “He said, ‘Let’s ask.’ And he said yes. The yes was definitive,” Guadagnino recalled.
The director went on to call Craig “one of the greatest actors” alive. “For me, one of the great characteristics of the great actors that you love, that you want to see on screen and you are affected by, I would say, is the generosity of approach — the capacity of being very mortal on screen,” he added. “Very few are, and very few iconic, legendary actors allow that fragility to be seen.” He said Craig has all of that.
Craig revealed that he met Guadagnino some 20 years ago and has wanted to work with him for a long time. He seemed to be counting his blessings that it finally happened.
“I kind of look at this movie and I think if I wasn’t in the movie and I saw this movie, I’d want to be in it, if that makes sense,” said the 56-year-old. “It is the kind of film I want to see, I want to make, I want to be out there. They’re challenging, but I hopefully incredibly accessible.”
Guadagnino also shared some ideas for what audiences should be thinking and feeling when they leave the theater: “I wanted, hopefully, to leave the audience at the end of it with a sort of idea of self. Who are we when we are alone and who are we looking for? Who do we want beside us?”
In his official director’s statement, Guadagnino described his approach to the film by writing: “‘How can a man who sees and feels be other than sad?’ William Burroughs asks in the last entry of his personal diary before his death. In adapting his second novel, published almost forty years after he wrote it, we have tried to respond to this humble appeal of the great iconoclast of the beat generation.”
A24 acquired the U.S. distribution rights to Queer days before its Venice world premiere. The indie studio plans to release it before the end of the year. The film was produced by Fremantle, Fremantle North America, Lorenzo Mieli for The Apartment, and Luca Guadagnino for his Frenesy Film Company, in collaboration with Cinecitta and Frame by Frame.
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