Omar Apollo Reveals How He Prepared For ‘Queer’ Sex Scene With Daniel Craig

Omar Apollo is sure to set pulses racing with his big screen debut as he reveals details about his appearance in Luca Guadagnino‘s Queer.

Ahead of the movie’s Venice Film Festival premiere, the Grammy Award nominee revealed the lengths he went to in order to prepare for his intimate scene with Daniel Craig, whom he praised as being a “vulnerable” scene partner.

“I had to get on the soup diet,” he 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, and I was on tour with SZA. Luckily, I didn’t have that many lines,” added Apollo.

He also revealed to co-star Drew Starkey how the Golden Globe nominee helped put his nerves at ease on the day of his big scene.

“I don’t know if I could say this, but we were drinking gin and tonics before our scene. It was a vibe,” recalled Apollo. “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.”

Craig, Apollo and Starkey were all in attendance with Guadagnino at the Venice Film Festival premiere on Tuesday, where the film received an 11-minute, 44-second ovation. A24 previously secured the film’s U.S. rights.

During a press conference ahead of the screening, Craig opened up about his sex scenes with Starkey. “You know as well as I do, there’s nothing intimate about filming a sex scene on a movie set. There’s a room full of people watching you. We just wanted to make it as touching and as real and as natural as we possibly could… Drew’s a wonderful, fantastic, beautiful actor to work with, and we just, we kind of had a laugh. We tried to make it fun.”

Based on William S. Burroughs’ 1985 novel, Queer follows Lee (Craig) after fleeing from a drug bust in New Orleans to 1940s Mexico City, where he becomes infatuated with Allerton (Starkey), a discharged American Navy serviceman and drug user. The movie also stars Jason Schwartzman, Lesley Manville, Henry Zaga, Drew Droege and Ariel Schulman.