Can you feel that? A low rumbling sensation has been reported worldwide. Water glasses are quivering like that scene in Jurassic Park. Instagram and X feeds are being constantly refreshed, refreshed, refreshed. Something’s coming.
That’s right. The tremors of a new internet boyfriend’s birth are rippling through the earth. And at the core lies Drew Starkey, the 30-year-old American actor set to steal scenes in Luca Guadagnino’s latest film, Queer, with Daniel Craig.
It was recently revealed that Starkey and Craig will star in some very steamy sex scenes in Queer, a revelation which has successfully whipped up hype for the film and set the internet’s insides alight in one fell swoop.
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“We just wanted to make it as touching and real and natural as we possibly could,” Craig said at a Venice Film Festival Q&A for the film this week. “We kind of had a laugh! We tried to make it fun.”
This was only helped by the news that Omar Apollo, the much-fawned-over American singer-songwriter, will also have sex scenes with Starkey and indeed be nude for much of the duration of the film. Basically, it’s perfect alchemy for online insanity, with Starkey at the centre.
Starkey certainly has all the hallmarks of a burgeoning internet boyfriend. He’s starring in a Luca Guadagnino film. He’s rocking up to press events wearing little Loewe tank tops (not unconnected: creative director Jonathan Anderson worked on Queer as its costume designer). He’s relatively unknown, but has gathered a small legion of obsessed fans from his other projects (Outer Banks and Love, Simon). He’s starred in films with other internet boyfriends and girlfriends (The Devil All The Time, alongside Robert Pattinson and Tom Holland, and The Hate U Give, alongside Amandla Stenberg and Sabrina Carpenter).
Who is Drew Starkey?
So who is he, exactly? Born in North Carolina in 1993 to a college-basketball coach and a school counsellor, Starkey grew up around the Blue Ridge Mountains in a small city called Hickory. He got into acting in high school after joining a drama class in freshman year, when he would have been 14.
He has since likened this class to an SNL skit among schoolboys aspiring to be arty, telling GQ in February: “[It was] a lot of Samuel Beckett and shit.”
He moved to Atlanta, “started auditioning like a f***ing madman”, and landed a few small parts in a smattering of Netflix productions like Ozark and Love, Simon.
In 2019 he was cast in a new Netflix series called Outer Banks, which centres around a teenage treasure hunt in North Carolina gone wrong. The series went on to become a prominent jewel in the Netflix TV series crown. “They called and said, ‘Can you move out to Charleston and shoot for the next five, six months?’” he told GQ. “I was like holy shit, yes.”
During his time on set, it’s rumoured that Starkey entered into a relationship with his co-star Odessa A’Zion, with the pair having been pictured together on holiday or holding hands. However, their romance was never confirmed, and the cast of Outer Banks remains incredibly close. Moreover, A’Zion was recently rumoured to be dating TikTok star Quenlin Blackwell, adding even further mystery to the mix.
Starkey’s personal life remains incredibly private, with a sparsely populated Instagram account and very little in the way of a social media presence.
Outer Banks helped launch Starkey’s career, though it wasn’t until he was attached to Queer that he was really known for anything but his role as Rafe Cameron, Outer Banks’ resident volatile coke addict.
Over 300 people were auditioned for the role of Allerton, who Starkey plays. "We saw 300 people, and every 50, I would say to Daniel, 'I think he is still the best,'" Luca Guadagnino told reporters at Venice Film Festival this week. "And after the 300th I said, 'I think he’s still the best.'"
An on-screen crush
Now, Starkey’s profile is hotting up - fast. Some people have been here the whole time: Starkey’s Outer Banks fan groups are intense, with some even guarding the studio lot while Queer was filming. “There were a lot of people outside the studio every night lined up with big signs saying, ‘Hi Drew,’” Daniel Craig told GQ.
But as Queer’s run of press begins, Starkey’s face is about to become unavoidable. Keep your eyes peeled, because you’re looking at the next Josh O’Connor, Mike Faist or, hey, maybe even Timothée Chalamet. You heard it here first.
