Drew Starkey discusses new film ‘Queer’, solo backpacking and career insights

The pressure to capitalize on his Hollywood moment and throw himself into everything was never going to be Drew Starkey’s style.

“I’m not a good multitasker at all,” says Starkey. “I like having one 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.

“It’s nice to put almost all your energy into one thing and really experience it to the fullest. It’s the only way I know how to work, and it’s the way I like to work.”

Since August, the 31-year-old has been laser-focused on “Queer,” his new film with 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 1950′ ers and his relationship with a younger man new in 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 for the brand alongside Craig). It’s a tall order for the actor, who has managed to stay largely out of the limelight despite stardom on the rise for a few years now.

“I was a little nervous going into it that I wouldn’t be able to handle it,” he says. “I’m quite easily overstimulated by attention and lots of people, but it’s been good to have Luca and Daniel and Jonathan and all these amazing people. Being together through it all has made it really, really easy and really fun.”

He has 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’ve done 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’m a person who really needs to give myself solitude — it’s a reminder of, ‘oh, right, there’s an outward communication that I need to tune into a little bit more,'” he says. “I stay sometimes so absorbed in a creative process 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 hell?'” he says. “And then I sent in a couple of auditions and we just talked about it for a couple of months. It was organic. I have never had such a process before. I just felt like I got to know Luca and he got to know me.”

Audiences familiar with Starkey from “Outer Banks,” where his character Rafe often screams, starts a fight and slams 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’ve got it figured out and you realize you’re missing a piece,” says Starkey. “He’s so different from anybody , I have ever played. The opportunity to train another muscle was really cool.”

The first conversations surrounding the construction of the character were conducted closely with Anderson, who would go on to cast Starkey in a Loewe campaign last 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. This was different, Starkey says of Allerton. “I started with this physical shaping of this person’s image that I had in my head, and then that kind of informed the rest. It’s a really cool way to prepare and work. Working with Jonathan was also an important part of it: he had very specific ideas about what he wanted. Both he and Luca really understand the psychology behind clothes.”

“Drew is incredibly cooperative to work with,” says Anderson. “He has this innate curiosity that I think is very rare for an actor.”

Allerton aside, the project came with Craig already attached – an obviously attractive, yet daunting, sale.

“I was nervous to meet Luca. I was nervous to meet Daniel. I was nervous to meet Lesley Manville and Jason Schwartzman and everybody,” he says. “But Daniel for sure, just because I thought, ‘I hope , he likes me’. Very quickly it goes away because Daniel is so open and warm and is ready to share his insecurities and fears with you.”

“Drew is showing signs of maturity far beyond his years,” Craig writes of Starkey. “What he has is that magical thing that great actors have — the ability to inhabit and be present and to show what’s inside.”

At this point in Starkey’s life, he would be hard-pressed to find a better example than Craig of how to balance life in the public eye while writing his own career rules.

“There’s something quintessentially punk about Daniel, especially in an age where everyone is under a microscope and everything is projected into the world, every little thing you do. But he couldn’t care less what people like him, and it’s such a good reminder. His mentality is like, ‘Fuck it,’ he says. That is what I have taken from him. And I feel that way too, but I think the more you get in the public eye and stuff, you start thinking about it more.”

His praise of Craig as open and warm can easily be returned to him. Starkey is disarming and immediately easy to talk to, stopping mid-conversation to explain the interruption of the chimes on his bird clock: a gift from a friend in honor of the one his grandmother used to have. It’s easy to see why his “Outer Banks” costar Chase Stokes agreed to help him move shortly after meeting him, and why “Queer” costar Apollo describes getting to know him as “a huge relief .”

Perhaps it has to do with the small-town upbringing: Starkey grew up in North Carolina, and as a child he was introduced to the performing arts by the stage in Asheville: his uncle was the creative director of the Asheville Lyric Opera, and Starkey’s family would also see theater performances in the city. He first tried acting in a school play around age 11, “and I think it itched,” he says. He continued school theater through high school, but always saw it as a way of expression, nothing more.

“Doing business in North Carolina wasn’t a goal,” he says. When an acting teacher in a non-major class at Western Carolina University pulled him aside and told him to do it with his life, it was the first time he had considered the subject 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 worked. 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 emerged as a bad boy that fans can’t get enough of ). The first two seasons were released in the middle of the pandemic, so it wasn’t until a few seasons later that the show’s actors really felt their newfound star power. Guadagnino has said he had never seen “Outer Banks,” but rather was introduced to Starkey from an audition tape another filmmaker sent his way.

“Honestly in my heart, I think Drew is a generational talent. And I think he’s really someone who takes his craft seriously in a way that’s very reminiscent of actors of the past,” says Stokes. “We’ve heard how Daniel talks about Drew and Luca talks about Drew, so it’s really beautiful to know that in my heart and then hear it from people who are doing it at the highest level, who have been doing it for so long. He’s just such an amiable actor. He is not someone who is unique. He is constantly thinking about the whole picture. And he is someone who cares incredibly about the whole process. And it is so fascinating to watch him work.”

It was announced earlier this fall that “Outer Banks” will end 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 an important transition point for the actor, he tries 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 a lot of different things and I really hope I can continue to do,” he says. “I hope people keep giving me opportunities.”