celeb photos Omar Apollo for NYLON; talks childhood, film debut, tour & more

[Apolonio ₃₄]

 

As he tells it — on a Zoom from Australia where he's currently on tour, sleepy-eyed in a black hoodie just hours after stepping off stage — the scene plays out like a coming-of-age story by way of Sundance: Apollo, a pez out of water in the Midwest, writing songs on an acoustic guitar he scored at a pawn shop. "There was no Mexicans around," he says, "I was called ugly all the time. All the time, like every day." He uploaded his first songs to SoundCloud in high school, but after one of his love songs got people in the conservative Catholic community whispering, Apollo made sure to obscure the pronouns. Of that time, he says, "I had a lot of anger and resentment towards my family and the people that I loved."

 

There are other things to be grateful for, including a budding film career — he's making his debut in Luca Guadagnino's Queer next year alongside Daniel Craig — and a sprawling North American tour (following stops in Australia and Japan). Performing his past traumas every night has been, of all things, joyful.

 

"You're surfacing all of these emotions that happened to you when you wrote them. And I remember how things smelled, how things feel, I remember all the senses that come up for me when I'm singing these songs. Even how the other person smelled. I don't know, it's strange. But it's not triggering. It doesn't make me sad. I'm giving a very small, compressed moment to the world." Of his ex, he says: "I love that there was love that existed and that I got to experience it that deeply, and that it was even real and possible for me to feel."

He pauses. "There is this beautiful thing that Tom Ford has said, 'When I'm in my death bed, I don't think I'll be thinking about a nice pair of shoes I had or my beautiful house. I'm going to be thinking about an evening I spent with somebody.'"

 

https://www.nylon.com/entertainment/omar-apollo-god-say-no-interview-tour

[James_Dean]

Mmm papi

[dooart]

[Vrx.]

"On being Tall"

 

Well that's one way to say bland