“You Brought the Animal Out of Me”: Drew Starkey, by Omar Apollo

Drew Starkey first blew up playing a coked-out rage monster on the Netflix soap Outer Banks, but leave it to Luca Guadagnino to flip that script by casting the 30-year-old actor as an emotionally detached sailor in his adaptation of the William S. Burroughs novel Queer. As Eugene Allerton, an expatriate living in Mexico City who becomes an object of obsession to William Lee (played by Daniel Craig), Starkey had to learn to do more by doing less, a 180-degree turn from the character he plays on Outer Banks, which returns for its fourth season this fall. Starkey was an hour removed from seeing Queer for the first time when his friend and castmate, the singer Omar Apollo, called him from the road in Australia to talk about social circles, solitude, and wild Roman nights.

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THURSDAY 5 PM JULY 18, 2024 L.A.

OMAR APOLLO: Dog, I’m in Australia. I miss your little dumb ass.

DREW STARKEY: I miss you, dude. How’s tour?

APOLLO: Really good. We just played Sydney last night. The crowd was great. Only good vibes. Heading to Brisbane, about to hop on the plane in a little bit.

STARKEY: Hell yeah.

APOLLO: We should talk about when we went to the—what was it? Bungalows. You were on a crazy diet. [Laughs]

STARKEY: So were you. You were on a soup diet.

APOLLO: I wanted to look good.

STARKEY: That was the first time we officially met. I met you at one of your shows the year before, but the first time we had an actual conversation, Dylan [Shanks, Apollo’s manager] was like, “You guys should

have dinner before you go out to Italy.” And I was like, “Great.” It was a breath of fresh air talking to you, because I was so nervous leading up to the movie. And talking to you, you were like, “I’m scared, bro.”

APOLLO: It’s really good to feel scared.

STARKEY: You know what’s wild though? The timing of this. I just saw Queer like an hour ago.

APOLLO: How was it? I heard you were amazing in it.

STARKEY: You were amazing in it. You were like this old-fashioned movie star. I screamed when you came on screen.

APOLLO: I’ve only seen bits of my part. But dude, I’m excited. I remember being on set the first day. I didn’t see you yet because Rome was kind of crazy for all of us, but I was watching Daniel [Craig] do a scene where he’s throwing something on a table. Then Luca showed me your scenes. I was like, “Oh my god, you’re a totally different person.”

STARKEY: I was nervous seeing it. Now it’s like, “I can breathe a bit.” Because sometimes you work on things and you have a vision of how it’s going to be, and then it goes through the editing process and postproduction, and you’re like, “Oh, shit. That’s not what I had in mind for it at all.” But Luca did a good job of communicating how it was going to feel and the way it was going to be shaped and put together. So it matched the vision in my head more or less, which was cool.

APOLLO: How’d you feel this morning when you knew you were going to go watch it? Because I know you have some really, really intimate scenes.

STARKEY: Well, I’d seen most of them during ADR, and you know that ADR is fun.

APOLLO: It is. It was so funny. Luca was like, “Can you do noises?” I was like, “Okay.”

STARKEY: It’s always exertion and breaths and groans. Just you in a booth alone doing that, you feel like you’re in an insane asylum.

APOLLO: I know. This is going to change your life completely. They got a new “it” girl, for real. We talked about this when we were drunk one night in Rome. You mentioned that you felt out of place in Hollywood. How do you feel about that now?

STARKEY: I remember talking to you very drunkenly. You and I both feel a bit out of place, like outliers. I’m from the middle of nowhere, North Carolina. You’re from Indiana. It didn’t seem far-fetched in terms of me dreaming of it, but in terms of access, I thought it was impossible to get here. I’m also stepping into the world a little bit. I just turned 30 this year. If I came out to L.A. when I was 18, I would have crashed and burned.

APOLLO: Honestly, I knew how country you were when I saw you pull up in a Tacoma. I’m like, “Yeah, this dude is different. He’s not from here.”

STARKEY: [Laughs] Can’t take the boy out of the country.

APOLLO: You can’t take the goddamn boy out of the goddamn country. You can bring him anywhere else though. I can tell you have this authenticity that transcends.

You’re moving on your own intuition, which is really refreshing. Did the success of Outer Banks change a lot for you?

STARKEY: It didn’t at the time because it happened in an echo chamber. Everybody was locked down. It took two years after it came out for us to actually come face-to-face with people who had seen it, so it eased us into the public eye. As a creative, you have to trust your intuition. You do that too, especially as a musician. I think being a musician is a way harder field to get into, in terms of moving through an industry. There’s a road map for an actor: Go to school, get an agent, start auditioning. It’s all kind of laid out in front of you. But being a musician, you’re steering the ship. I don’t think I’d have the discipline to sit down and make my own art every day. And you do.

APOLLO: Thank you for saying that. You’d be surprised. People think they need a plan and an entire scope of their career, how they want it to go. But that is constantly fluctuating. Actors are playing a role, there’s a director, you don’t have full control. There’s a lot of choices happening outside of you. Being an artist, it can be that. But if you want to be an integral artist, it’s a lot of suffering. It is rough, but thanks for noticing that.

STARKEY: Of course.

APOLLO: How would you describe your day to day? You’re a hard guy to reach, but when I see you, it’s always really sweet and personal. You have your friends and you just stick to it. You’re not really focused on going out and doing anything for optics.

STARKEY: I need solitude. It’s the only way to get an understanding of who I am and recalibrate. Especially when I’m working, I have to be all in. Otherwise, I feel like I’m cheating myself or the hundreds of people that are there to make something. But when I’m off, I like being alone.

APOLLO: What do you do? Do you read? Do you watch TV? Do you go on walks? Do you travel?

STARKEY: I sit in the corner of my room and do nothing.

APOLLO: [Laughs] What’s your sign?

STARKEY: Scorpio.

APOLLO: Oh, you’re a Scorpio. Do you like to get revenge?

STARKEY: I don’t like to get revenge, but I will hold onto that feeling to motivate myself, if that makes sense.

APOLLO: I like that. It’s your drive.

STARKEY: Yes. I like when people cross—

APOLLO: Hate on you?

STARKEY: Yeah, but then I don’t do anything about it. I just use it as fuel, maybe. I don’t know. Those glasses are funny.

APOLLO: Dude, I fuck with them. I just got them because I’m going to Japan and I feel like I need to reinvent my Japan look. Eyewear has been influencing me these days. This one was giving Matrix vibes. It’s summer in Japan, so I’m going to be dressing down, and I thought having loud glasses would be cool.

STARKEY: It’s winter there right now, right?

APOLLO: Literally, when I was onstage, my voice got so fucked up because I wasn’t wearing a scarf, and breathing cold air all day.

STARKEY: What do you do to protect your voice on tour?

APOLLO: After that day, I didn’t speak. It’s probably how you feel when you’re in your room and you’re quiet.

STARKEY: I don’t know. I feel like I have a core group of people that I love and see on a daily basis, but I’m not too social.

APOLLO: How many people do you talk to every day?

STARKEY: Maybe two or three.

APOLLO: Solid. I’m a four to five kind of guy.

STARKEY: Yeah, but you like having people around.

APOLLO: Certain people. I don’t like having randos, because I like to speak my mind.

STARKEY: Do you ever get lonely?

APOLLO: Oh, yeah. I get big lonely when I’m at home, not really when I’m on the road. But it is nice to have time to yourself. I can relate to that, because with the rhythm and the pace of our lives, you need to not be so in your head all the time.

STARKEY: Yeah. I’m more in my head when everything’s fast-paced and I’m with a lot of people. Granted, I love it and need that, because otherwise I wouldn’t do anything. People definitely motivate me, but I feel like I can get back to myself when I’m alone.

APOLLO: I’m the opposite. I’m really good in social settings. Were you a fan of Luca’s movies before you found out you were going to do Queer?

STARKEY: Oh, yeah. I would think most actors have a list, and he was on a short list of dream directors I would love to work with.

APOLLO: Do you still keep in contact with Daniel Craig?

STARKEY: Here and there. That’s a busy man. I know he’s filming right now. Working with Daniel, I could have thrown all my years of acting school out the window.

APOLLO: Would you say that you learned a lot from working with him?

STARKEY: Yeah, a million times. He’s so fucking good at every aspect of his craft, just homed in every day. And he’s such a weirdo, dude.

APOLLO: He’s such a legend.

STARKEY: He’s absolutely fucking incredible in this film. He’s really shattering.

APOLLO: Super vulnerable too, right?

STARKEY: Very vulnerable, because as an actor, he could give a shit, dude. He’s the most punk person. He’s game for anything. He’s like, “Yeah, whatever. Let’s do it. Who cares what anyone thinks?”

APOLLO: I don’t know if I could say this, but we were drinking gin and tonics before our scene. It was a vibe. 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. Also, you and him linking up reminds me of Paul Newman and Tom Cruise in that movie. I forgot what it was called.

STARKEY: Yeah, dude. The Color of Money, that’s the movie. Fear was running through me the entire process, but fear is a good thing, creatively. Fear leaves you out in the open, so you allow more things in. But yeah, I was really fearful on the first day, and I think he was too.

APOLLO: How did you prepare for your role in Queer?

STARKEY: It was really difficult because it felt like a very delicate high-wire act. You step too far to the right and it teeters off into a direction it doesn’t need to. You step to the left, and it’s like, “Oh, this is way off.” So it was incredibly difficult. My character Allerton, there’s not a lot of verbalizing that he has in the film. Two weeks in, I was talking to Daniel. I was like, “I feel like I’m not doing anything.” He was like, “Oh, you want to signal. You want to be one of the airline guys on the runway with the two things signaling the plane. Every- one wants to do that. You want to show what you’re feeling. But no one does that in their real life.” And I was like, “Yeah, you’re right.”

APOLLO: Makes a lot of sense.

STARKEY: It makes so much sense. He’s a wise soul. It’s funny because Allerton is surrounded by these insane characters throughout the course of the film. Jason Schwartzman and Lesley Manville play these people on the edge of society. Everyone is this really extravagant version of a human being at the time. I’m centered in the middle of all that. So at first, I felt like a bystander, like, “Oh man, I want to jump in.” But once you accept that that’s your role, it becomes much easier. It was that and dieting.

APOLLO: How many pounds did you lose?

STARKEY: I dropped about 30 pounds.

APOLLO: Oh my god.

STARKEY: I got a little bit too thin, and Luca was like, “Hey, bring it back up a little bit.”

APOLLO: Yeah, I had to get on the soup diet. 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 six-five.

STARKEY: Damn.

APOLLO: 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.

STARKEY: The scene is so good.

APOLLO: Was it sensual? What was the vibe? Tell me about it, bro.

STARKEY: It was very sensual.

APOLLO: How did you prepare for playing a gay-ass role like this? Did you act more feminine?

STARKEY: We did a lot with make-up. Because in the book, Burroughs describes him as having feminine features. Burroughs says, “Almost as if he’s wearing makeup, but he’s not.” So we talked about blushing my cheeks a lot. I wore some eyeliner for a few scenes and a light pink lipstick. Then we darkened my eyebrows and made them really manicured. I wanted that to come across physically, but then I didn’t want to pretend to be something else. Part of the allure of Allerton with Lee is not being able to nail him down and define him. That’s what makes him interesting to him. There’s a constant discussion about whether he’s queer or not.

APOLLO: That is true.

STARKEY: Playing that ambiguity was the fun part. It was really tough at first because you want something really concrete as an actor, but I had to lean into a bit more ambiguity for this one, which is a different challenge.

APOLLO: Totally. You were shooting for a long time, no?

STARKEY: Two and a half months.

APOLLO: You were on set the whole time.

STARKEY: Oh, I know, but when you came out to Rome, we had a good time. You were my first break. First weekend I went out with you, I was like, “Alright, Omar’s in town.”

APOLLO: We went to a drag show, then we went to a rave, and then it was my birthday. Do you remember that?

STARKEY: Yeah.

APOLLO: Everyone sang me “Happy Birthday,” I was taking shots. I had a lot of good birthdays and a lot of bad birthdays, but that was my best birthday, the most intense. I remember we walked in the rain at 5 a.m. with the homies. We were just walking down the street and it was like—

STARKEY: The fountain? Yeah, dude.

APOLLO: It was a good vibe. I have videos from that.

STARKEY: I have some photos, and it’s absolute chaos.

APOLLO: I have to send you the video of you. It’s so funny. I remember when I took it, you were like, “Bro, please keep that in your phone.”

STARKEY: Wait, what’s the video of ?

APOLLO: It’s of you. I asked you a question about how you felt about something, and your answer was so—you didn’t even answer the question.

STARKEY: Yeah, it was all a blur. I was letting loose, man. I was so pent-up for the first couple weeks. You brought the animal out of me.

APOLLO: Would you say you’re happy with the way your life’s going?

STARKEY: Yeah. It’s a very unorthodox life, but I never got a chance to travel when I was younger, so this is like a dream.

APOLLO: You have a good balance. I feel like you don’t let anything affect your day to day. I didn’t know you in North Carolina, but I feel like you were still the same, if that makes sense.

STARKEY: Yeah. Omar, you have to go in one second?

APOLLO: I know, I just saw that. I feel like it just got good. Do you want me to do some rapid-fire questions?

STARKEY: Go for it.

APOLLO: Drew, what is your most controversial opinion? Make it good.

STARKEY: Shit, white bread over any other bread, 100 percent.

APOLLO: No sourdough, no rye, no wheat?

STARKEY: No, all of it’s trash compared to sliced white bread.

APOLLO: I’m into that. What is the worst thing you’ve ever said to someone? Be completely honest.

STARKEY: Shit, dude.

APOLLO: Bro, just tell me.

STARKEY: I’ve said “I hate you” to someone.

APOLLO: You meant the hate?

STARKEY: Yeah, and I don’t really have that in my bones. I don’t hate anyone, but—

APOLLO: Was it a friend or a family member? What was the vibe?

STARKEY: It was a friend, long time ago, but we’re fine now.

APOLLO: How are you with money? Do you save it?

STARKEY: I’m too frugal. I don’t spend any of my money. I think I’m just paranoid.

APOLLO: You probably get a lot of things for free now.

STARKEY: Not as much as you’d think.

APOLLO: I have a feeling after this movie comes out, you’re going to get a lot of things for free.

STARKEY: Well, I’m going to send it your way, so I’ll add the forwarding address to you.

APOLLO: This is how North Carolina you are. You don’t even want it.

STARKEY: I want you to have it.

APOLLO: Thanks, daddy.

STARKEY: Are you catching a flight?

APOLLO: No, I’m good. They’re handling everything.

STARKEY: Then keep going.

APOLLO: Okay. What do you think about dying?

STARKEY: I think it’ll be an interesting adventure.

APOLLO: Are you religious?

STARKEY: I grew up religious. Spiritually homeless right now.

APOLLO: Love that, spiritually homeless.

STARKEY: What about you?

APOLLO: I’m spiritual. I don’t subscribe to any religion, but I think there are a lot of beautiful things to learn. You should take what resonates and leave what doesn’t.

STARKEY: Yeah, there’s more beauty in mystery anyway.

APOLLO: What’s the most expensive thing you own?

STARKEY: It’s the Tacoma that you saw me pull up in.

APOLLO: Are you kidding?

STARKEY: That’s the most expensive thing I own, for sure. I bought that from my local dealership in Hickory, North Carolina, and drove it off to California. These are good questions. You’re a good interviewer, man. Look at you.

APOLLO: I was hoping that it was going to go well, because we’re already friends. I know how the fucking internet works, bro. They’re going to be picking and choosing the tiniest shit. It says here, “Would you con- sider yourself fashionable?” I feel like your aura is already hot, so you don’t need to really try when it comes to fashion. But would you consider yourself fashionable?

STARKEY: In terms of fashion or style, I like things with quality and things that last a really long time. So I find that the pieces I wear, I’ll wear for years and years and years. I ain’t like you, dude.

APOLLO: [Laughs] Gay people do the most. I love being extra. Right now, I’m wearing sweatpants with loafers.

STARKEY: What does the shirt say?

APOLLO: It says, “Be different,” and I’m wearing a little scarf. Then I have this pendant that I love.

STARKEY: Who is that?

APOLLO: It’s Jesus on the cross. It’s from the 16th century.

STARKEY: Wait, for real?

APOLLO: Yeah, it’s an antique.

STARKEY: Dude, that is the most wizard shit ever. Look at you, walking around with a 16th-century pendant around your neck at the airport.

APOLLO: Dude, I spent too much money on it.

STARKEY: Is that the most expensive thing you own?

APOLLO: No, no, no. I just bought a Lucian Freud.

STARKEY: Yeah, you’re getting into collecting now.

APOLLO: Yeah. Probably after the movie and Jonathan [Anderson] too, he influenced that vibe. Art is sick.

STARKEY: Luca would have artists come on set and be like, “Should I buy this piece?” And I’d be like, “It looks amazing. Yeah, you should.”

APOLLO: That’s fire.

STARKEY: It was such a cool environment to be in.

APOLLO: Did you drink on set? Be honest.

STARKEY: [Laughs] I don’t know.

APOLLO: I was definitely loose.

STARKEY: The whole thing was a fever dream. I don’t remember if I drank or not. No, I don’t think I did.

APOLLO: You’re focused, and I respect that about you. You take your artistry really, really seriously, and I admire that, especially in a film like this that’s so important. William Burroughs, a prolific writer and such an insane life, and Queer, not being able to be published in the ’50s and coming out 30 years later or something like that.

STARKEY: It was published in the ’80s.

APOLLO: It’s amazing to have those things resurface and be reinterpreted and reimagined, and you’re a part of that. We spoke about it before. I think it was my birthday night. Oh no, the day after. I was smoking American Spirits for two hours on the roof of this hotel. It was a vibe. I remember Daniel Craig came up behind me. He was like, “Omar, let me buy you a drink,” and I was already smacked. I was like, “Dude, I can’t do anymore.” He bought me a drink and I just kept going. I was like, “Bro, Daniel Craig asks to buy you a drink, you can’t not.”

STARKEY: [Laughs]

APOLLO: Alright, well now I have to go. It was a pleasure. So good seeing you, man.

STARKEY: Dude, yeah. When are you coming back to the States?

APOLLO: The 27th. Let’s go get dinner.

STARKEY: Yeah, let’s do it.

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Grooming: Anna Bernabe using Jillian Dempsey & Oribe.

Digitech: David Maziarz.

Fashion Assistant: Natalie O’Campo.

Production Manager: Vince Barrucco.

Production Assistant: Frankie Benkovic.