Sep 4
Luca Guadagnino Answers for Daniel Craig After Asked If James Bond Could Be Gay at Venice Film Festival
Emell Adolphus READ TIME: 2 MIN.
Every needs to just grow up – at least, that's how director Luca Guadagnino was feeling while promoting his new film, "Queer," with Daniel Craig at the Venice Film Festival.
Craig stars as an American expat who falls in lust with a young man (played by Drew Starkey) in 1940s Mexico City. The role is quite the departure from his previous longstanding role as the secret agent James Bond, but naturally people still associate Craig, 56, with the role of 007.
However, when a festival attendee asked Craig if Bond could be gay at the film's press conference, Guadagnino was having none of it, Metro reported.
Craig sighed at the question and was reportedly heard muttering, "I mean, please..."
Then Guadagnino jumped in. "Guys, let's be adult in the room for a second," the "Call Me By Your Name" director said. "There is no way around the fact that nobody would ever know James Bond's desires, period."
And that was that ... until Guadagnino added, "Having said that, the important thing is he does his missions properly."
"This made Craig chuckle, earning a pat on the back from Guadagnino, who appeared to tell him: 'Darling, I adore you'," Metro relayed.
"For Craig's part, he said that Guadagnino was 'the reason' he wanted to work on 'Queer,' which he described as 'the kind of film that I want to see, want to make and want to be out there'," Metro added.
Just because Craig is no longer heating up the screen as Bond, that doesn't mean he isn't still hot. Guadagnino's film reportedly features a number of steamy gay sex scenes that made it a tad difficult to find a distributor until A24 recently stepped in and being picked up the film.
Guadagnino said he had "an intuition" about casting the film the way he did. "It is about love," the "Challengers" director said, "but it's about loss, it's about loneliness, it's about yearning – it's about all of these things.
"And if I was writing myself a part, trying to tick off things that I wanted to do, this would would fulfill all of them," Guadagnino went on to say.