Queer star Omar Apollo drank G&Ts with Daniel Craig before sex scenes: "It was a vibe"
The singer opened up on filming alongside the James Bond actor.
Luca Guadagnino's Queer has been dominating the conversation at Venice Film Festival this past week, with the romantic drama starring Daniel Craig, Drew Starkey and Omar Apollo receiving a nine-minute ovation.
The movie sees Craig play a gay American expat in 1950s Mexico City who becomes infatuated with a younger man (Starkey). In the film, musician Omar Apollo plays Henrique Zaga, and he has now revealed how he prepared to film a sex scene with the former James Bond actor.
"I had to get on the soup diet," Apollo told 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."
Reflecting on the build-up to the scene, Apollo admitted that he and Craig were "drinking gin and tonics" beforehand. "It was a vibe," he said.
More like this
"I had a really cool experience with him. He definitely has this presence to him that is felt from far away. I remember asking him, 'How do you feel when the camera's on?' And he said, 'To be honest, every time the camera's on me, I'm terrified.' I thought that was beautiful. You have to be vulnerable. You have to be open to these emotions. It was such an honest answer."
The sex scenes in Guadagnino's Queer have been praised by critics, with IndieWire's Ryan Lattanzio describing two of the scenes as "feverishly charged" and "the most explicit gay sex scenes I can remember in any mainstream movie".
Elsewhere, Robbie Collin for The Telegraph said the scenes "are about as graphic as modern male movie stardom allows".
Speaking of the movie at Venice, Craig said: "There's nothing intimate about filming a sex scene on a movie set.
"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."
If you're looking for more to watch, visit our Film hub or check out our TV Guide and Streaming Guide. For more from the biggest stars in TV, listen to The Radio Times Podcast.
