I COULDN'T HAVE DONE QUEER WHILE I WAS DOING JAMES BOND

Daniel Craig talks about portraying William Lee in Queer, while director Luca Guadagnino discusses experimentation, directing films back to back, and more

- JAYABHUVANESHWARI B

DANIEL Craig was the longest-serving actor to portray James Bond. So, when he chose to play William Lee in Luca Guadagnino's Queer, some thought he took the role to explore vulnerability, far removed from the alpha masculinity of Bond. Clarifying that Queer was just another character for him to explore and not to establish that he is more than Bond, Daniel says, "I couldn't have done this while I was doing Bond—it would have felt reactionary, like a statement about Bond rather than about me and what I truly wanted to do. Now that I've moved on from Bond, I can take on films like this, but that's not how I see it."

On the importance of casting Daniel Craig as William Lee, Luca Guadagnino, who adapted Queer from William S Burroughs' 1985 novella, says, "It was absolutely essential. There's something beautiful about knowing that a perspective is irreplaceable—that there's only one way to see it. In this case, Daniel's interpretation of William Lee is that perspective—it couldn't be anyone else's." Guadagnino elaborates, "In filmmaking, you only have one point of view. You can set up five cameras, cover everything, and trim it later—but that's not cinema. Cinema is about making a choice and fully committing to it."