Though mostly known from the likes of “Outer Banks,” “Love, Simon,” and “The Hate U Give,” Drew Starkey is about to enter a whole new level of recognition with Luca Guadagnino’s “Queer.” The actor makes a star-making turn in the Venice premiere, which will likely see a heavy awards season run, alongside Daniel Craig in an adaptation of William S. Burroughs’ book of the same name.
We caught up with Starkey at the Toronto International Film Festival premiere of the film on Monday, September 9. “I felt very honored to work with these people,” he tells IndieWire. “I look up to real giants of [this] creative field, and I hope I get to keep doing it.”
In Ryan Lattanzio’s review of the film, he writes that “Queer” has “some of the most explicit gay sex scenes I can remember in any mainstream movie.”
At the Venice press conference for the film, Starkey addressed the sex scenes, saying, “When you’re rolling around on the floor with someone the second day of knowing each other, that’s a good way to get to know someone.” As to whether there were any chemistry tests before filming, it seems as if director Guadagnino didn’t even need them to know how perfect a match Craig and Starkey were going to be.
“We had a table read in New York a couple of months before we started shooting,” Starkey said at TIFF. “That was a good way to get everyone in the room and see everybody and get my nerves out and just hear it out loud. That was the first time I met Daniel, and the rest of the cast was at this table read, and it was beautiful.”
We asked him if he watched any other movies to get inspired for his turn with the “Challengers” director. “I watched ‘Beau Travail.’ I remember watching that before filming, you know, Claire Denis. Something about that film I think has some strange parallel to this.”
A24 recently landed the U.S. distribution rights to “Queer.”
