The tennis thriller Challengers with Zendaya was only released this year, and director Luca Guadagnino is already presenting his next film. This time, former James Bond Daniel Craig takes on the lead role, and last week the novel adaptation Queer celebrated its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival.
Craig was widely celebrated for his performance, also because Queer shows the secret agent from a different, fragile side. But the stars had to put up with a lot to complete the film, as his co-star Drew Starkey recently revealed.
Drew Starkey had to work hard for the intimate scenes with Daniel Craig
Queer is based on an unfinished novel by William S. Burroughs (Naked Lunch) and is about drug addict Lee (Craig), who develops a fascination with the younger Allerton (Drew Starkey) in 1950s Mexico.
Luca Guadagnino’s own statement that it is his “most personal film” contains some gay sex scenesof which Craig said in Venice, according to the Guardian:
There is nothing intimate about filming a sex scene on a movie set. […] We just wanted to make it as touching, real and natural as possible.
Drew Starkey added that the two worked with choreographers months before filming to master the challenge: “Rolling around on the floor on the second date is a good way to get to know someone.”
Outer Banks star Drew Starkey revealed a bizarre detail of the production
Working in front of the camera is one thing, but acting doesn’t stop there. Outer Banks star Drew Starkey also learned this on Queer. After filming was finished, he and his colleagues had to dub scenes in the studio, which is known as ADR. This included sex scenes.
In an interview with fellow queer singer Omar Apollo, he talked about the bizarre results of working with Luca Guadagnino:
Apollo: How did you feel this morning knowing you were going to watch the film? Because I know you have some very, very intimate scenes.
Starkey: Well, I had seen most of them at ADR, and you know ADR is fun.
Apollo: Right. It was so funny. Luca asked, ‘Can you make noises?’ I said, ‘Okay.’
Starkey: It’s always so exhausting, you’re breathing and moaning. If you do it alone in a cabin, you feel like you’re in a madhouse.
Working on Queer was a challenge for Starkey, but he seems to be happy with the result:
Sometimes you work on something and you have a vision of what you want it to be, and then it goes through editing and post-production and you think, ‘Oh, shit. That’s not what I imagined it to be at all.’ But Luca conveyed very well how it should feel […]. So it was more or less the vision in my head, and that was cool.
Queer has not yet been released in German cinemas.