Daniel Craig and Drew Starkey on QUEER for VARIETY Magazine

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In a new cover story for VARIETY, QUEER stars Daniel Craig and Drew Starkey speak with Chief Correspondent Daniel D’Addario and Co-Editor-in-Chief Ramin Setoodeh about starring in Luca Guadagnino’s latest love story. They discuss being straight actors who are portraying queer characters, the film’s sex scenes, Gen Z audiences rejecting sex scenes, the sexuality of Craig’s “Knives Out” character Benoit Blanc, and more. 

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Craig, Starkey, and Guadagnino on straight actors portraying queer characters:

Starkey: “It wasn’t part of the audition process—[Guadagnino] didn’t ask us the intricacies of our sexuality.”

Craig: “I’m not dismissing it, but I didn’t really…There’s kind of a trust in the director, and a trust in the process of what you know, and realizing that the story has massive, universal themes that appeal hopefully to everybody. The movie’s not defined by that. I really, genuinely don’t think it is. Other people see it differently—that’s up to them.”

Guadagnino: “I’ve been shooting sex on-screen since I did my short film ‘Qui’ when I was 22. I always said to myself, if you start to give that scene a level of awareness or alarm, it’s going to become what it shouldn’t be. Quality means making an audience surrender to what they are seeing,” he says, “not judging, not feeling the fakeness of it, but believing it completely.”

Craig and Starkey on filming the sex scenes in “Queer”:

Craig: “You kind of have to leave your ego at the door. You’ve got to kind of just let it go. There are no rules.”

Starkey: “That’s what I learned from you. There’s no ego involved. I’ve never seen a freer actor.”

In sex scenes that are both explicit and truly revealing, Starkey’s Eugene and Craig’s Lee capture the tension and longing of a one-night stand that turns into something more. There was an intimacy coordinator on set, Starkey says, “but it was mostly conversations between me and Daniel and Luca. We’d all have a conversation about how we’d want it to feel—then just dive in.”

Craig and Starkey on why the film’s sex scenes shouldn’t be controversial:

Starkey: “We can go on our phones and go on any website and see whatever you want. Daniel doesn’t—But as a culture, we’re so attuned to that.” This film, though, “came from a loving place that’s so much deeper than abrupt images.”

Craig: “I’ve been in movies with terrible love scenes. It doesn’t work. You need a director who has a sensitivity, a director who understands, to—to put it crassly—make it real. That’s one’s job on the day: to make it as real as possible.”

Craig and Starkey on Gen Z audiences rejecting sex scenes in films:

Craig: “I don’t know, I can’t speak to that generation.”

Starkey: “I don’t know if that’s true. Maybe it’s because there’s a much louder voice online.”

Starkey on what it will be like for his parents to see “Queer”:

“I keep telling them, when we watch the film, the roles will be reversed. I grew up with them shielding my eyes during certain scenes. I was like, ‘When we watch this one, I’ll be shielding your eyes.’”

Craig on the sexuality of his “Knives Out” character, Benoit Blanc:

In 2022’s “Glass Onion,” it was revealed that Craig’s cerebral investigator Benoit Blanc is a gay man living a life as emotionally fulfilled and stable, with a domestic partner played by Hugh Grant.

“We had discussions about not wanting to dig into it. Because the classic idea of the detective is that they come from somewhere that we don’t know. Columbo has a mystery wife we don’t know—and I think it’s good that way. So I didn’t want it, but it was too tempting. Hugh will do it? Great! That forced the decision, really.”

Starkey on running into challenges with the producers of Netflix’s “Outer Banks,” who initially declined his request to be released to shoot “Queer”:

“It was a tight window. But Luca kept saying, very emphatically, It’ll happen. We’ll make it work.”

Starkey on emerging as the film’s breakout star:

“It’s head-spinning. I can’t really make sense of it—it all feels absurd. I’m just trying to remain very present and calm. I’m in a moment—but the next year, it changes.”

[Photo Credit: Richard Phibbs for Variety Magazine]

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