Drew is also one of the cover stars of the Winter 2024 issue of Dazed Magazine! Other cover stars are Mikey Madison, Harris Dickinson, and Pa Salieu. In this interview, he discussed Queer, working with Daniel Craig, being a Scorpio, and much more. You can read the full interview in our press archive! Also visit our gallery for the beautiful outtakes!
Photo Sessions > 2024 > 007: Dazed
In a fan edit captioned “white boy of the century”, Drew Starkey does a variety of hot-guy activities: he smiles, he licks his lips, he answers on-screen interview questions, he poses on the red carpet, he rolls up his shirtsleeves. “White boy of the century,” just one of thousands of Starkey fan cams, has one million views. The comments are ravenous: “a ride I wouldn’t survive”, “#needhim” and “Drew Starkey the man you are.”
Over Zoom with him after his cover shoot, I begin to feel the same sensation “white boy of the century” evoked; that I am being drawn towards the actor without conscious volition. I wonder if this gravitational phenomenon, one that manifests in a slow pan-in on every nod, is inextricable proof of the up-and-comer’s power, or if his camera is literally following him. “Oh yeah, I’m on my iPad and it has that weird auto face tracking. I don’t know how to turn it off. Like, what the fuck is this doing? I can be out of frame and it follows me!” He shakes his head gamely to demonstrate.
Starkey stars opposite Daniel Craig in the upcoming Luca Guadagnino film Queer, an adaptation of William S Burroughs’ semi-autobiographical novella of the same name. In auteur Guadagnino’s hands the short novel has gotten a long treatment: a two- and-a-quarter-hour ode to loving someone so much you want to live inside their head. After debuting at Venice Film Festival, the film is set to come out in December. Craig, enjoying life after Bond, is an actor at the height of his game, but for Starkey, Queer is more important. It’s star-making.
Before Queer, Starkey’s biggest role was Rafe Cameron in the popular Netflix YA thriller Outer Banks. Set on an island off the coast of North Carolina (the state Starkey grew up in), it’s a series in which everybody is ridiculously attractive and has a catchy nickname, but only some have money. Currently the show is in its fourth season and Starkey is on double shift promoting OBX and Queer – navigating the teen press fest of OBX with the full ensemble cast (they recently did a video for Cosmo called “The Outer Banks Cast Are Completely Unserious for 9 Minutes”, where the boys of OBX goof around with each other for… 10 minutes), while also sitting down to talk with journalists about working with two of the biggest names in Hollywood on an adaptation of America’s most divisive postmodern author.
Dazed