Daniel Craig’s Masculine Constructions | The New Yorker

In Daniel Craig’s new film, he’s seen prowling exotic locations wearing a white suit, drinking too much and generally doing his best to sleep with the sexiest visitors. But the similarities to Craig’s most famous role end there. The film is “Queer,” Luca Guadagnino’s adaptation of William S. Burroughs’ semi-autobiographical short story of the same name. Craig plays the Burroughs avatar, an American writer named Lee, as he sails for much younger men in post-war Mexico City. (The film was shot in Italy, on sets that evoke an atmosphere that is alternately seedy and beautiful.)

Craig has starred in the past five James Bond films, most recently No Time to Die in 2021. In the years since, he has pursued a variety of roles that seem to mark a conscious break from his Bondian image, whether spinning as a tweedy detective with a southern accent in Rian Johnson’s popular Netflix film series “Knives Out” or playing Macbeth on Broadway. But his character in “Queer” is a particularly stark departure. The book, a 1985 sequel to Burroughs’ “Junkie,” centers on Lee’s romance with a young American, played in the film by Drew Starkey. The film’s sex scenes are about as obvious as any that a major male star has appeared on screen with a male co-star.

Craig, now 56, lives with his wife, actress Rachel Weisz, and their young daughter. Both native British, they recently moved back to London after years in New York. Craig is known to be a straight interviewer who once said he would rather “cut his wrists” than play 007 again. (He did make another Bond film, after all.) Recently, he’s said he couldn’t care less about who succeeds him in the franchise, though at other times he’s seemed genuinely emotional about leaving the character. He even caused a bit of a stir too narrator Black this month that Netflix would be doing a longer big-screen release for the upcoming “Knives Out” mystery, which is slated for next fall.

Craig and I recently met at the Chateau Marmont in West Hollywood. He came casually dressed in baggy light brown trousers and a brown jacket. His hair was a little disheveled and he was unshaven. (Some of his very un-Bondish fashion choice(including in a recent ad campaign for luxury designer Loewe, has been the subject of amusing headlines in recent years.) We sat in the hotel lobby and had a late lunch. Craig is very informal in person – he seems to really enjoy swearing – but he was focused and thoughtful, never looked at his phone and didn’t mind two young women who sat near us and occasionally giggled while they tried to eavesdrop.

In our conversation, which has been edited for length and clarity, we discussed his experiences making “Queer,” what he wanted to convey with the film’s sex scenes, and his complicated relationship with James Bond.

How did this project come to you? Luca approached you?

Yes, Luca came to me. I met him twenty years ago in Rome. I was at some kind of crazy actor’s party overlooking the Colosseum. He came and said hello. And I didn’t really know who he was, but he talked a little bit about himself and we did some vague ideas. “It’s going to be great. We should work together one day.” Just like you do.

You all do.

I mean, that’s what you do, right? You say, yes, of course, what a great idea. But it actually worked. And I’ve just watched his stuff over the years and thought about how amazing he is and how he pushes things.

Had you read Burroughs before?

I wanted to read “Junkie.” Here it is a little different. I think if you go through a certain kind of college or whatever, college education, you hit Burroughs at some point. It is a kind of rite of passage. I don’t feel it’s like that in England. But I reread “Junkie” and I read “Queer,” which is a ten-minute read. It was a really easy decision.

Did you study the life of Burroughs? It’s pretty crazy.

It’s a crazy life. I mean, I went down the biography route and did it because I think you should. And they are kind of fascinating. He was what we in England call a trust-fund child.

We say that here too.

Do you? Right. OK So he was kind of a trust-fund kid. I mean, he wasn’t a very wealthy fundraiser, but he had an income that’s interesting to me in many ways because it creates a certain type of person.

Say more.

In a way, it can take you both ways. You can become a completely redundant person, or you can sort of use it and try to expand yourself. And it seems to me that he just had a thirst for knowledge. He had really odd jobs out there. And then went to university and then was in Austria, and then really traveled and did a lot of things, and then got into drugs and wanted to expand his mind that way. And as for his sexuality, I have no authority on that, but it seems to me that sex and sexuality are not necessarily compatible. I mean, it depends.

I don’t know what you mean.

Well, in this sense that he got married. It was probably more likely that he felt he should get married. I have no idea, but he was probably gay. And what that meant in the fifties – it was illegal. It was downright illegal, but so was being a junkie. So he was kind of an outsider in every way.

What appealed to you about playing him?

I recognized him.

From people you knew?

Yes. There’s all these recordings of him talking about TV shows or whatever, and there’s this voice he puts on that’s more “male.” And it felt like a kind of act, like he was putting it on to say, This is William Burroughs. That’s who I am, a very serious literary person. And then there would be bits of footage I’d capture where he was really alert, maybe high, maybe whatever. I’m terrible at impersonating people, so that wasn’t going to happen. I just wanted to find someone I could tune into. And I felt like I could tune into him because he was someone who was looking for love.

It felt like you were trying to play a character who acted in a way that wasn’t quite comfortable in his own skin.

For sure. And I’m fascinated by the concept of masculinity and how artificial it is and how constructed it is.

Do you think you’re into it because you’ve always been, or because you played the most famous icon of masculinity ever?

No, I’ve always been interested in it. I would say one of my biggest reservations about playing (Bond) would be the construction of masculinity. It was often laughable, but you can’t mock it and expect it to work. You have to buy into it.