Luca Guadagnino rebukes gay James Bond question, hails Daniel Craig instead

The press conference at a film festival can be a place of thoughtful reflection on a film’s themes and challenges, or a place where Cate Blanchett gets asked what she’ll wear on the red carpet. (“I’m going naked,” she brushed off the question.) With Luca Guadagnino, you never know what you’re going to get: his films are lush and transgressive, but in interviews, he’s just as likely to talk about that as to go on a tangent about the beauty of his lead actor’s ears. Nevertheless, the filmmaker knows when to draw the line. When his latest star Daniel Craig was asked at the Venice Film Festival whether James Bond would ever be gay, Guadagnino stepped in, reportedly throwing up his hands and saying, “Guys, let’s be adults in the room for a second.”

A journalist asks Daniel Craig if he thinks there will ever be a gay James Bond, and Luca throws up his hands. “Guys, let’s be adults in the room for one second.” pic.twitter.com/roDvuVfTEk

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Guadagnino had every right to shut that line of conversation down, given that this was a press conference for his movie Queer and not anything Bond related. But the auteur actually had a good take on the sexuality of the world’s most famous fictional spy (via The Hollywood Reporter): “There is no way around the fact that nobody would ever know what James Bond desires, period. The important thing is that he does his missions properly.” Probably not going to end the incessant questions about diversifying Bond, but a valiant effort nonetheless.

More importantly, Guadagnino used the opportunity to praise Craig, saying he never expected that the actor would sign on for the adaptation of William S. Burroughs’ novel. But “he said yes. And the yes was a definitive yes, he’s one of the greatest actors. It’s a privilege to work with someone like him,” the auteur gushed. “The reason I did the movie is because of this great man here. I’d wanted to work with him for a long time. We met 20 years ago and said maybe we should work together. And we finally did, which is just a wonderful thing.”

Similarly, Craig shared, “I meant to work with Luca Guadagnino for a long time and this is the kind of film I want to see and make, especially due to its challenging nature.” Per the official festival account on Twitter/X, the Knives Out star continued, “In the research process I watched a lot of interviews by William Burroughs, who appeared so deep and measured. I thought that that couldn’t be him, especially not the Burroughs who wrote the emotional hump that is Queer. So I tried to look for the other him, in a story that is not only about love but also about loss, loneliness, and yearning. If I was trying to write a part with all the things I wanted to do this one would fulfill them all.” James Bond who?