Everyone is talking about Omar Apollo and Daniel Craig’s sex scene in Queer. Director Luca Guadagnino and screenwriter Justin Kuritzkes, who gave us the gay poly drama Challengers, team up again for Queer. Openly gay 27-year-old singer Omar Apollo makes his acting debut as a piece of man meat for Daniel Craig to enjoy. Omar recently opened up to his Queer co-star Drew Starkey about making the racy film. In their Interview Magazine chat, the guys discuss losing weight for their sex scenes.
“I had to get on the soup diet,” Omar Apollo told Starkey. “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 lbs., 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 lbs. 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.”
Singer Omar Apollo, who’s nude for most of his screen time in QUEER, is also at the press conference pic.twitter.com/jTLLuOmzwT
— Kyle Buchanan (@kylebuchanan) September 3, 2024
“I don’t know if I could say this, but we were drinking gin and tonics before our scene,” Apollo went on to say. “It was a vibe. I had a really cool experience with him. He definitely has this presence to him that is felt from far away.”
Billed as a historical romance, Queer follows William Lee (Craig), a former addict who becomes an expat in 1940s Mexico. He soon finds himself completely obsessed with a younger Navy man, Eugene Allerton (Starkey). Based on William S. Burroughs’ semi-autobiographical short novel of the same name, Queer is a follow-up to Burroughs’ earlier work Junkie. The book was considered too obscene to publish in the 1950s because of its homosexual content. Omar Apollo plays a young man Craig meets in Mexico as a sexual distraction from Starkey’s character.
Watch a new clip from Luca Guadagnino’s Queer starring Daniel Craig and Drew Starkey pic.twitter.com/MrBUJTr5Xx
— Letterboxd (@letterboxd) September 3, 2024
Queer had its world premiere at the 81st Venice International Film Festival in July. No word on when it will hit theaters in the United States. Though, Queer currently has an 80% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
QUEER takes sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll to a whole new level. Full of steamy love scenes and an audacious vision, but one that’ll be extremely divisive. It’s Daniel Craig like you’ve never seen him before, and a star-making moment for Drew Starkey pic.twitter.com/CIEmXf3lJJ
— Ema Sasic @ Venice (@ema_sasic) September 3, 2024
why are white immigrants called “expats”?
Being an ‘expat’ has nothing to do with one’s skin color and everything to do with whomever being in a country they’re not native to.
Than why are brown people labeled immigrants but whites are labeled expats?
I think Omar Apollo will have even more fans from participating in this film.
I’ve seen Omar Apollo in concert, and he’s good. So we’ll see even more if him? I’m in!
Can HARDly wait!!!