One of the most talked-about titles at the 2024 Venice Film Festival is Queer, director Luca Guadagnino and writer Justin Kuritzkes’ follow-up to Challengers. The film stars Daniel Craig as an American ex-pat living in Mexico in the 1950s who, per the official synopsis, establishes an “intimate connection” with a young student, played by Drew Starkey.
Queer also stars singer Omar Apollo, who has a sex scene with Craig.
“Yeah, I had to get on the soup diet,’ he told Starkey in a conversation for Interview. “Luca did not tell me to lose weight, but when you’re about to have a sex scene with Daniel Craig, you’re like, ‘Oh, dude, I can’t be looking off.’ I was at 200 pounds, because I’m 6’5″. It’s around where I should be, honestly. But I got down to 181 when the movie came. I lost 20 pounds because I read in the script that my character had a flat brown stomach. I was like, ‘Damn, I’m actually not flat right now.’ I had to get it together, and I was on tour with SZA. Luckily, I didn’t have that many lines.”
The “Pedro” singer celebrated his birthday on set, which everyone involved everyone singing him “Happy Birthday” and doing shots. “I had a lot of good birthdays and a lot of bad birthdays, but that was my best birthday,” he said. “The most intense.”
A24 acquired the distribution rights for Queer in the United States, but there’s no release date yet.