Yahoo Lifestyle Drew Starkey Reflects on His Singular Focus in ‘Queer,’ Embracing Solitude, and Navigating Stardom
The pressure to capitalize on his Hollywood moment and fling himself at everything was never going to be Drew Starkey’s style.
“I’m not a good multitasker at all,” Starkey says. “I like to have a singular thing to focus on. A lot of my peers are really good at juggling a lot of different things at once, and I’m like, ‘how do you do that?’” he adds.
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“It is nice to put almost all of your energy into one thing, and really experience it fully. That’s the only way that I know how to work, and that’s how I like to work.”
Since August, the 31-year-old has been laser-focused on “Queer,” his new film costarring Daniel Craig, Jason Schwartzman, Lesley Manville and Omar Apollo. The project, which reunites director Luca Guadagnino with his “Challengers” screenwriter Justin Kuritzkes and costume designer Jonathan Anderson (of Loewe), is based on the 1985 book by William S. Burroughs and follows an American expat living in Mexico City in the 1950s and his relationship with a younger man new to town.
Starkey’s global tour for “Queer” kicked off with the film’s premiere at the Venice Film Festival, with stops at various other film festivals, premieres and Loewe’s Paris Fashion Week show (he’s a new face of the brand, along with Craig). It’s a big undertaking for the actor, who has managed to stay largely out of the limelight despite a star status on the ascent for a few years now.
“I was a bit nervous going into it that I wouldn’t be able to handle it,” he says. “I get very overstimulated pretty easily by attention and a lot of people, but it’s been good having Luca and Daniel and Jonathan and all these great people. Us being together throughout all of it has made it really, really light and really fun.”
He’s come into the experience with a new sense of clarity after one of the busiest periods of his career. Last year, after wrapping “Queer” he headed straight to Charleston to shoot “Outer Banks,” only to be grounded by the SAG strike days later.
“It was the first time I’d really had a long break, and I was like, ‘I don’t know who I am.’ I did a lot of soul searching this year and found ways to be a little more comfortable with myself, not attached to work,” he says.
That included a week and a half of solo backpacking in Yosemite and Sequoia National Parks, along with a renewed focus on journaling.
“I am a person who really does need to give myself solitude — it’s a reminder of like, ‘oh, right, there’s an outward communication that I need to tune into a little more,’” he says. “I get so wrapped up in a creative process sometimes that I need to talk to myself more.”
His role in “Queer,” as a mysterious, quiet young man named Eugene Allerton, first entered his radar when his agents told him Guadagnino was interested in meeting for breakfast.
“I was like, ‘what the f–k?’” he says. “And then I sent in a couple auditions and we just talked about it for a few months. It was organic. I’ve never had a process like that before. I just felt like I was getting to know Luca and he was getting to know me.”
Audiences who know Starkey from “Outer Banks,” in which his character Rafe is frequently screaming, starting a fight and slamming a drink, will need a beat to recognize him as Allerton: shy, soft-spoken, more physical than vocal.
“He’s like a puzzle that you can’t quite [figure out]. You think you figured out and you realize you’re missing a piece,” Starkey says. “He’s so different from anyone I’ve ever played. The opportunity to work a different muscle was really cool.”
Initial conversations around building the character were done closely with Anderson, who would go on to cast Starkey in a Loewe campaign this past fall.
“Sometimes you get a character and it’s very specific about who this person is and the world they live in, and you start adding physical things on. This was different,” Starkey says of Allerton. “I started with this physical molding of this person’s image I had in my head, and then that kind of informed the rest. It’s a really cool way to prep and work. Working with Jonathan was such a key component to that, too: he had very specific ideas of what he wanted. Both he and Luca really understand the psychology behind clothing.”
“Drew is incredibly collaborative to work with,” says Anderson. “He has this innate curiosity, which I think is very rare for an actor.”
Allerton aside, the project came with Craig already attached — an obviously attractive, yet terrifying, sell.
“I was nervous meeting Luca. I was nervous meeting Daniel. I was nervous meeting Lesley Manville and Jason Schwartzman and everyone,” he says. “But Daniel for sure, just because I was like, ‘I hope he likes me.’ Very quickly, that sheds away because Daniel is so open and warm and is ready to share his insecurities and fears with you.”
“Drew shows signs of maturity well beyond his years,” Craig writes of Starkey. “What he has is that magic thing that great actors have — the ability to inhabit and be present and to show what’s within.”
In this moment in Starkey’s life, he’d be hard-pressed to find a better example than Craig of how to balance life in the public eye while writing your own career rules.
“There’s something that is essentially punk about Daniel, especially in a time where everyone is under a microscope and everything’s projected into the world, every little thing you do. But he could care less what people think about him, and it’s simple, but it’s such a good reminder. His mentality is like, who cares?” he says. “That kind of mentality of, ‘f–k it, just f–k it.’ That’s what I’ve taken from him. And I feel that way too, But I think the more you get in the public eye and stuff, you start to think about that more.”
His praise of Craig as open and warm can easily be turned back around on him. Starkey is disarming and immediately easy to talk to, stopping mid-conversation to explain the interruption of the chimes of his bird clock: a gift from a friend in honor of the one his grandmother used to have. It’s easy to see why shortly after meeting him, his “Outer Banks” costar Chase Stokes agreed to help him move, and why “Queer” costar Apollo describes getting to know him as “a great relief.”
Perhaps it’s to do with the small-town upbringing: Starkey grew up in North Carolina, and as a kid was introduced to the performing arts by the scene in Asheville: his uncle was the creative director of the Asheville Lyric Opera, and Starkey’s family would also see theater productions in town. He first tried acting in a school play around age 11, “and I think it scratched an itch,” he says. He continued school theater through high school but always viewed it as a way of expression, nothing more.
“Acting in North Carolina, there wasn’t a goal,” he says. When an acting teacher in a non-majors class at Western Carolina University pulled him aside and told him he needed to be doing that with his life, it was the first time he’d considered the profession as a career option.
“No one had ever told me that. I didn’t know what an agent was,” he says. “I didn’t know how it works. Being in movies felt so out of reach.”
Everything changed for Starkey when he was cast as Rafe Cameron in “Outer Banks,” which became an instant phenomenon since premiering on Netflix in April 2020 (and with it, his character Rafe emerging as a bad boy the fans can’t get enough of). The first two seasons were released in the thick of the pandemic, so it wasn’t really until a few seasons in that the show’s actors really felt their newfound star power. Guadagnino has said that he had never seen “Outer Banks,” but rather was introduced to Starkey from an audition tape another filmmaker sent his way.
“Truthfully in my heart of hearts, I do believe that Drew is a generational talent. And I think he really is somebody who takes the craft seriously in a way that is very reminiscent of actors of times past,” says Stokes. “We’ve heard the way that Daniel talks about Drew and Luca talks about Drew, so it’s really beautiful to know that in my heart and then to hear it from people doing it at the highest level, who’ve done it for so long. He’s just such a gracious actor. He’s not somebody who is singular minded. He’s constantly thinking about the whole picture. And he’s somebody who cares incredibly deeply about the entire process. And it’s so fascinating to watch him work.”
It was announced earlier this fall that “Outer Banks” will end with its next season, opening up Starkey’s career just in time to ride the post-“Queer” wave. And while it’s easy to see this as a major point of transition for the actor, he’s trying not to attach too much to the moment.
“Who knows? I feel like it’s a bit of an illusion sometimes, but yeah, I’m very lucky that I’ve been able to dip my toes into very different things, and I really hope I can continue to do that,” he says. “I hope people keep giving me opportunities to.”
Launch Gallery: Drew Starkey, Star of Upcoming Film 'Queer', in Latest Looks from Menswear Collections
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