Breaking Baz: Ben Whishaw Reunites With Director Ira Sachs To Portray 1980s Photo Artist Peter Hujar; Star Talks Oscar-Chasing Short ‘Good Boy’ & Netflix Thriller ‘Black Doves’

EXCLUSIVE: Ben Whishaw will reunite with director Ira Sachs to shoot an “intimate” movie about photo artist Peter Hujar.

Until his death from AIDS in 1987, Hujar was a leading figure in the group of artists, musicians, writers, and performers at the forefront of Manhattan’s downtown cultural scene. 

The untitled film follows Passages the acclaimed picture Sachs shot in Paris with Whishaw and Franz Rogowski.

Passages has been enjoying awards season attention with Rogowski bagging the best actor prize from the New York Film Critics Circle — in fact I just saw him the other night at an event for the picture out here in Los Angeles.

Whishaw, Rogowski and the film are in contention for prizes at the Independent Spirit Awards. Whishaw’s also on the BAFTA Best Supporting actor longlist for Passages.

And he’s involved in another project that’s up for honors: Good Boy, which is a surreal short film he made with director and writer Tom Stuart. It’s one of 15 films shortlisted for the 96th Academy Awards in the Best Live-Action Short Film category.

Good Boy provides a poignant blend of slapstick comedy and “something really deep and difficult,“ as Whishaw put it.

In the short, the Paddington star goes on a journey with Marian Bailey (The Crown), a sort of final trip for a son and his mother in an old VW camper van. En route there’s a botched robbery attempt; the only bounty bagged is a pigeon.

Whishaw and Stuart have been friends since their early twenties. ”We met as young actors and we’ve known each other ever since,” Whishaw noted, as he explained how Stuart had slowly moved into screenwriting after penning a play that was staged at the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse. Now he’s ventured into film directing. “It’s so thrilling when someone you’ve known that long starts to really realize other talents that they’ve been harboring but not exploring,” added Whishaw.

Good Boy is dedicated to Susan Stuart, the filmmaker’s mother, who died in the Spring of 2020. ”It’s based very much on his mum and the loss of his mum,” Whishaw said.

Stuart had left London in the wake of her passing and went to stay with friends in Glastonbury. Whishaw revealed the director had taken his cast and crew back to the Somerset town during the shoot. Glastonbury, famous for the music festival that carries its name, is an area that’s said to lie on ancient mystic ‘ley lines.’ I swear those ‘lines’ channeled some sort of charge through the screen as I watched the film. “Yeah, there’s all of that going on,” agreed Whishaw.

And what about the dead pigeon that plops from the sky. Wasn’t it expensive to hire a crane to enable it to drop so high from the sky, I wondered? “The film cost 12 pence, so there wasn’t money for a crane. It must have been someone up a ladder dropping it ,” said Whishaw chuckling. “Everyone was very ingenious and that’s what these kind of projects can sometimes bring out because you’re just doing it for the joy of doing the work.”

Future in Bond

Our conversation took place not long after he’d participated in a table read for the second block of episodes of six-part Netflix thriller Black Doves, penned by Joe Barton, which stars Keira Knightley as a spy, Sarah Lancashire as her boss and Whishaw as Sam as an assassin who returns to London to Knightley’s character to help protect her and find out who killed her politician husband.

Whishaw laughed when thinking about the Sister production, saying “it’s a little different” from the James Bond spy films in which he appeared as gadgets chief Q. He made three Bonds — A Time To Die, Spectre and Skyfall. Black Dove, he observed, is “in a slightly more heightened world. It has it’s own quite unusual flavour.”

Recently, Whishaw said that because he was only contracted to make three Bond films, he wouldn’t be returning in its next iteration as Q. When I questioned him about the situation, he wasn’t so certain. “We’ll see,” he said cryptically.

However, Whishaw’s in no doubt about portraying Peter Hujar opposite Stella Schnabel (Russian Doll, At Eternity’s Gate) in Ira Sach’s film once Black Dove is completed. He told me that it’s a two-hander — “a very small, very intimate little film.”

Hujar’s perhaps best known for his provocative monochrome photographs featuring members of the cultural vanguard of 1970s and 1980s New York — among them Fran Lebowitz, Susan Sontag and David Wojnarowicz. 

Hujar’s work wasn’t widely celebrated before he died of complications from AIDS in 1987. However, in the intervening decades his candid portraits have been much sought after. For instance, Elton John is a huge fan and has assembled a substantial collection of his images. 

Following the Hujar movie, Whishaw will step from screen to stage to appear in two theater productions in London.

First up is a new play based on an adaptation of a book about which he could reveal nought. Then in September he will play Vladimir opposite Lucian Msamati as Estragon in Samuel Beckett’s Waiting For Godot at the Theatre Royal Haymarket with James Macdonald directing.

Sounds like there’s plenty more intimate moments coming from one of the UK’s most sought after stars.