Was it real or…? Drew Starkey opens up about his big “queer” moment

Was it real or…? Drew Starkey opens up about his big “queer” moment

READING TIME: 4 MIN.

Earlier this year, Luca Guadagnino caused a stir on social media over a motel room scene in “Challengers,” his drama about the rivalry between two tennis players – played by Josh O’Connor and Mike Faist – on and off the court. In Zendaya, playing the object of both intentions, he initiates a three-way kiss; Then, eventually, she pulls away, but the men don’t. Later, the two men literally have a hot moment in the sauna; But despite all the hetero- and homoerotic tension, there are no sex scenes in the film.

Not so with “Queer,” Guadagnino’s latest film in which Daniel Craig plays William Burroughs’ doppelganger (it’s an adaptation of Burroughs’ unfinished novel), in which the “Knives Out” actor plays a drifting and often drunken writer, who passes the time in Mexico City sometime in the 1950s. His aimlessness ends when he becomes obsessed with another American, a younger man played by Drew Starkey, the 30-year-old best known for his ongoing role in the Netflix teen mystery series “Outer Banks,” which recently debuted was extended for a fifth year last season.

“To be clear, the sex in the film is definite and plentiful,” writes Time magazine in a feature about the film. “Anyone who was frustrated by the obvious panning of the camera in Guadagnino’s previous May/December gay romance “Call Me by Your Name” should be pleased with the openness of Queer.” In the film, Lee (Craig) has sex with two men: one uber-willing hottie (named Chumi Bar Guy), played by queer music icon Omar Apollo; and far less Starkey, who plays Eugene Allerton.

Now that the film is in theaters and generating a lot of Oscar buzz (particularly for Craig), there is a lot of buzz online about the sex scenes in the film, one with Apollo in a seedy bar and the second between Craig and Starkey in Lees Apartment. The Daily Beast calls it “one of the most amazing sex scenes all year” in a year full of amazing sex scenes. Suffice to say, it leaves little to the imagination, and particularly in the case of Starkey, which has led many to question whether it is real or a prosthetic.

The question is answered in the Time story: “Starkey says he wore a prosthesis.”