Daniel Craig Wanted to Make ‘Queer’ Sex Scenes as ‘Touching and Real and Natural’ as Possible: ‘We Tried to Make It Fun’

Daniel Craig opened up about filming sex scenes for Luca Guadagnino‘s “Queer” during its 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,” 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 1985 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.”

Of Guadagnino, Craig said he had “wanted to work with him 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 films 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 had a great “generosity of approach” and is one of “very few iconic actors who allow their fragility to be seen.”

Guadagnino’s “Challengers” collaborator Justin Kuritzkes penned the screenplay, 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” marks Craig’s first time at Venice Film Festival, though he previously shot scenes for James Bond film “Casino Royale” in the historic city. It’s also the festival debut for relative newcomer Starkey, who is poised to break out in a big way after this role.