Daniel Craig opened up about filming sex scenes for Luca Guadagnino‘s “Queer” during the film’s Venice Film Festival press conference, saying he and co-star Drew Starkey “tried to make it fun.”
“You know as well as I do, there’s nothing intimate about filming a sex scene on a movie set. There’s a room full of people watching you,” Craig said. “We just wanted to make it as touching and as real and as natural as we possibly could. Drew is a wonderful, fantastic, beautiful actor to work with and we kind of had a laugh. We tried to make it fun.”
Based on the novel of the same name by William S. Burroughs, “Queer” is set in 1950s Mexico City and follows Lee (Craig), an American expat who “spends his days almost entirely alone, except for a few contacts with other members of the small American community,” according to its official synopsis. “His encounter with Eugene Allerton (Starkey), a young student new to the city, shows him, for the first time, that it might be finally possible to establish an intimate connection with somebody.”
When asked how he came to be involved in the project, Craig said he had wanted to work with Guadagnino “for a long time.”
“We met 20 years ago and said, ‘Hey, we want to work together,’ and we finally did,” he said, adding of “Queer”: “If I wasn’t in this movie and I saw this movie, I’d want to be in it. It’s the kind of film I want to see, I want to make, I want to be out there.”
In an interview with Variety ahead of its premiere, Guadagnino reflected on casting Craig, saying: “He is, honestly, one of the great actors of his generation: so subtle, so profound and yet so beautifully universal. So when he said, ‘Yeah, I’m up for it, and I’m up for anything that is required for me to be doing in this movie,’ I really felt like: ‘You know what? I’m a lucky guy.’”
Guadagnino added during the press conference that Craig has a great “generosity of approach” and is one of “very few iconic actors who allow their fragility to be seen.”
Of course, Craig is best known for his performance as James Bond in the most recent installments of the action franchise, officially retiring as 007 in 2021 after “No Time to Die.” It didn’t take long for a reporter to bring up Craig’s most famous role, asking if he thinks there could ever be a “gay James Bond.”
“Guys, let’s be adults in the room for a second,” Guadagnino jumped in to applause and laughter from the room. “There is no way around the fact that nobody could ever know James Bond’s desires. Period. The important thing is that he does his missions properly.”
Beyond being a love story between Craig and Starkey’s characters, “Queer” also deals with the topic of addiction. Asked why he is drawn to making films about the subject, Guadagnino joked: “I am a gentleman who goes to sleep very early, never did drugs in my life, never smoked a cigarette. I’ve gone onto a diet and I lost 15 kilos … I also can count on two hands the lovers I’ve had in my life.”
Having said that, Guadagnino added: “I love having the opportunity of seeing people and not judging them — of making sure that even the worst person is represented in the right way.”
The screenplay for “Queer” was penned by Guadagnino’s “Challengers” collaborator Justin Kuritzkes, and the cast also includes Jason Schwartzman, Lesley Manville, Henry Zaga, Drew Droege, Ariel Schulman, Colin Bates, Ronia Ava, Perla Ambrosini and Simon Rizzoni.
“Queer” premieres at Venice Film Festival on Tuesday night and will be released in theaters by A24.
From Variety US