Call Me By Your Name stars talk gay love with W magazine

It’s the gay romantic drama that’s been causing plenty of Oscar buzz since it debuted at Sundance back in January, and now the stars of Call Me By Your Name have admitted that they knew from the beginning that the big screen adaptation of André Aciman’s 2007 novel had the power to connect with audiences.

Armie Hammer and Timothée Chalamet, who star as a pair of young men who embark on an impassioned love affair over the course of one summer in 1980s Italy, said that the film’s focus on the characters’ emotional connection rather than internal struggles with their sexuality immediately marked it out as different from most other films that deal with same-sex relationships.

Posing for an intimate new shoot for W Magazine, the actors opened up about their roles in the Luca Guadagnino-directed movie, which is set to hit UK cinemas in October.

“You don’t really see a lot of tender love stories between men,” Hammer, 30, whose breakthrough role came playing the Winklevoss twins in 2010’s The Social Network.

“There’s always one person who says, ‘Oh, we can’t do this’ or ‘My family wouldn’t approve.’ You don’t get that in this movie.

“Instead, you have two men who are trying to figure out the feelings they have for each other.”

Chalamet, who rose to fame on the second season of Homeland in 2012 playing US Vice President’s son adds: “We both realised that the story was simultaneously important, fresh, relevant, artistic, and out there.”

The 21-year-old actor, whose electrifying performance in Call Me By Your Name is already attracting Oscar buzz, goes on to admit that he found the six-week shoot in Italy emotional exhausting.

“It did take a lot out of me,” Chalamet says. “I had to take a month-long detox after we finished shooting.”

Call Me By Your Name set to be released on 27 October in the UK and 24 November in the US. The September issue of W Magazine issue is out now.

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