Director Luca Guadagnino has an eye for leading men. Last year, Guadagnino put Josh O’Connor through a complex game of sex, betrayal and tennis in “Challengers,” written by Justin Kuritzkes. Director Daniel Craig takes him on a journey through the emotional depths of Queer, based on William Burroughs’s novella. O’Connor and Craig, best known for playing iconic Brits — the former as Prince Charles in “The Crown,” the latter in the five most recent James Bond films — spent last summer working on the sequel to Netflix’s “Knives Out.” “Wake Up Dead Man” franchise which will be streaming on the platform next year.
Daniel Craig: Where did you first meet Luca Guadagnino?
Josh O’Connor: I met him at his favorite hotel in London.
Craig: Claridge?
O’Connor: Claridge. I got a text from our friend Jonathan Anderson saying, “Do you want to come for lunch? I’m with Luca Guadagnino.” I was out in London, and I cycled to Claridge’s – I don’t know what was going through my mind, but I forgot that I was meeting Jonathan Anderson and Luca Guadagnino.
Craig: This is not like you. You’re usually together. I met him at a party – incredibly briefly, 10 years ago, if not more – in Rome, in one of those apartments overlooking the Colosseum. Luca introduced himself, and I pretended to know who he was.
O’Connor: Was “Queer” the first discussion about working together?
Craig: Yes it was. My agent, Brian Lord, was talking to Luca about it. Luca says he doesn’t think I’ll do it. Little did he know: I think I might have said yes to anything. So I met him at Claridge’s. I have stayed in touch.
O’Connor: Yes. The Challengers thing was very strange, because I was living in New York with no friends. I’ve talked to you about this before.
Craig: I talked about that.
O’Connor: If I had known you then. I would have hated it. But then, my agent set me up on a date with Justin as a friend. At this point, Justin was writing his plays. He had a YouTube channel.
Craig: What is it called?
O’Connor: I can’t remember. I will find it for you. It’s crazy.
Craig: Justin Jabis.
O’Connor: We can spit more off camera. But he wrote the screenplay for the feature film and sent it to me. I read it and he said: Which characters do you like? At this point Luca was not involved. I said no. They’re both great tennis players, but I didn’t see myself in either of them. But I said it’s great and good luck to them.
Craig: What about tennis stuff? Did you think this would be easy?
O’Connor: You’ll know this because we’re both British actors who trained at drama school. And when you go to drama school, you know that thing where you say…
Craig: …I can do anything. Speaking French and riding horses.
O’Connor: anything. I once auditioned for a play, and I needed to know how to play an instrument. I tried to learn the harmonica in one day. Obviously I didn’t get the part. So tennis? I was like, yeah, no problem. But at that point, I had never worked with a trainer or been in the gym for that long in my entire life. Every day, we would do two or three hours of training and two or three hours of tennis. And it crashed.
Craig: Did you kind of enjoy it?
O’Connor: I loved it. I had the time of my life and I didn’t keep it.
Craig: When I first started playing Bonds… Listen, I used to go to the gym a lot. But in my 30s, I abused my body more than I should have. Suddenly, I got this part (in “Casino Royale”), and I was like, Oh, I have to be really fit for this. I’ve done it all. But by the end of the movie, I had been doing it for so long that I stopped. And then another Bond movie comes along, and you’re like, oh, I’ve got to get back into shape. That cycle, I had to break it. I’ve only just started keeping fit regularly, so I haven’t stopped for long periods of time. It’s really boring to talk about exercise.
O’Connor: I told you when I saw it: I thought “Queer” was a complete masterpiece. It feels very different from the work I’ve done recently. Was that a conscious decision?
Craig: I don’t think he was conscious. I’ve worked with Luca: there’s an atmosphere he creates on set, an atmosphere of wonderful chaos, but also absolute focus. She’s Italian. It’s Sicily. Which is very liberal for a strict Englishman. That doesn’t mean he’s not completely focused on everything. The character felt multi-faceted and multi-layered. He has a gun on his hip and walks around as a macho man, but it’s Burroughs. I threw the kitchen sink at him.
O’Connor: He feels so insecure, yet the way he walks is so confident.
Craig: But it makes a lot of sense to me. This is the trick of manhood.
O’Connor: The great thing about Luca is that he’s not afraid to take some source material, stretch it, and turn it into something through his eyes.
Craig: Obviously I like the ending (“The Challengers”). Love where you’re going: all that preparation, and arriving in the moment. And that’s what Luca is about – he wants to reach the moment of love. You see the love between the two young men surpasses everything around it. I’m just a sucker for that. What is there?
O’Connor: I think that’s what was going on in this movie: Yes, there’s the tennis background, but the desire that these three people had for each other is torn apart…and there’s an invisible magnet that pulls them back together. This was definitely one of the ingredients that Luca was simmering underneath.
Craig: The scene in the hotel room, where they are not having sex with each other, is the biggest penis scene in the history of cinema.
O’Connor: The truth is, those intimate scenes are the least sexy scenes you can do. I feel more vulnerable when doing an emotional scene.
Craig: The sex is the least interesting thing in the scene. You have to play the truth as best you can. The only thing that happens is in these people’s heads. If you can’t see that, this scene is gratuitous. What are they doing there? What affects them? All these things. You owe it to a sex scene to contain all of these things. Otherwise, it is an excuse to expose people.
O’Connor: The reason they are there is to serve the story.
Craig: Did you laugh?
O’Connor: Mike (Fest) and I laughed as we kissed Zendaya, and gradually we ended up kissing each other. She just stood back and watched. We had a moment of kissing for a while, then we opened our eyes and saw that it was just us – and that made us laugh.
Craig: This summer we did the song “Wake Up Dead Man.”
O’Connor: I’ve never experienced anything like that on set. We were all in each other’s pockets for three months. Especially you and me. Mostly you and me.
Craig: Like it or not.
O’Connor: Trailers! This is the best trailer I’ve ever seen. It’s better than my apartment in London. And I spent a lot of time knocking on your door.
Craig: “Don’t say anything. It’s Josh. Just hide behind the couch.”
O’Connor: Another question I wanted to ask relates to these films and how they are watched. Because they were a huge hit in theaters. Does that bother you?
Craig: The first film was a huge surprise, and was a completely released film. He made a lot of money and stuff. And listen, I’m not knocking on where he went and where he is. But what saddens me is that there isn’t a more theatrical moment to these films. These films seem to have cross-generational appeal. The idea of families going to see this movie fills me with great joy. It’s not just a niche film that we do here – it’s for everyone. The truth is that we have a collective experience in cinema, blah, blah, blah. I know everyone says this, but it’s the truth.
O’Connor: that it.
Craig: I’m glad people are seeing this in their homes. I’m happy that people are watching it together at home and enjoying it. This is absolutely great. But there is nothing better than going to the movies. Laughing at the movies is the best thing in the world.
Production: Emily Ulrich; Lighting director: Max Bernitz; Setting the trend: Jill Mills