Drew Starkey Had an Intimacy Coordinator for ‘Queer’ Sex Scenes, but Didn’t Really Need Them: It Was Like ‘a Jiu-Jitsu Class’

Starkey, Daniel Craig, Jonathan Anderson, and Justin Kuritzkes spoke with IndieWire at the NYFF premiere of Luca Guadagnino's latest.

Luca Guadagnino’s drugged-up gay romance “Queer” made its U.S. premiere at the New York Film Festival on Sunday, October 6 as part of the festival’s Spotlight Gala. A24 acquired the domestic distribution rights following its premiere at Venice, set to premiere in theaters on November 27.

One of the buzziest films of this year’s upcoming awards season, Guadagnino’s latest has been talked about for having the filmmaker’s most explicit, graphic sex scenes of his career, involving Daniel Craig and Drew Starkey. At the NYFF premiere, Starkey told IndieWire that while they had an intimacy coordinator, he didn’t really feel the need to use them.

“Daniel and I worked with an intimacy coordinator, but we were in movement rehearsals for like months before those shoots,” Starkey told IndieWire. “So, you know, by the time we got there, it’s like we’d been [in] like a jiu-jitsu class for like a couple of months. It was with this amazing, beautiful dance, and choreography. We were comfortable. It was, it was a lot of fun.”

Screenwriter Justin Kuritzkes reunited with Guadagnino for the duo’s second project, following the wild success of “Challengers.” Based off of William S. Burroughs’ novel, Kuritzkes aimed to finish what the novel ended on quite abruptly.

“Without spoiling anything for people who haven’t seen the film, there’s a door that’s opened in the book that is then swiftly closed and that’s kind of towards the end of the book,” Kuritzkes said. “Luca and I, in our early conversations about what we thought we wanted this movie to be, we made a decision pretty firmly that we were going to open that door and go through it and see what was on the other side. And so I was structuring the movie always knowing that that was coming and that really changed the way that I would then approach even the earlier scenes in the book.”

Kuritzkes, who is married to “Past Lives” filmmaker Celine Song, also teased that it’s unlikely that we’ll ever see the pair team up for a film of their own. “You know, we really love to support each other and we are each other’s first readers and we’re each other’s harshest critics and I could not be prouder of her or happier for her work. But we do like to keep our work lives and our real lives separate.”

Loewe creative director Jonathan Anderson teamed up with Luca Guadagnino, again following the pair’s work on “Challengers,” to lead the costume design for “Queer.” Anderson praised the filmmaker’s collaborative nature, saying that “he wants you to bring something to the table.”

“When you then get into the process, he knows exactly what he wants from it and he loves clothing as everyone knows,” Anderson continued. “He knows he likes his subtlety in clothing. It’s an amazing partnership to build, to do. It’s been a kind of crazy year we had challenges at the beginning of the year and now we have this and it’s sort of like like a whirlwind of like something which I’m not really used to. He’s the only person I would ever work with on something like this, because he allows you to be who you want to be. Even if it’s challenging for him in terms of filming, in terms of breaking down of clothing, he was fine with it, which I love. I adore him.”

Anderson also reflected on the dream collaboration of his career: Styling the late Maggie Smith. “I was very lucky that she [did it], after many, many years of persuading her to do it. It literally was shot in five minutes, because that’s all she would give. It was a dream come true. I’m quite lucky that that happened.”

IndieWire also got a quick beat with Daniel Craig, who emphasized his love for the script as getting him on board for the project. “Just the script. It was amazing. And Luca, you know, it’s an easy answer,” he said. We tried to get him to tease a bit about the third installment of “Knives Out,” but he said, of course, “I can’t.”