Isgandarov admits to being nervous about doing the film at first; he wasn’t sure how its overt gayness would be received back home. But an early meeting with Firstman assured him that he was in capable hands. “My first little rendezvous with Jordan before we started filming, I was like, ‘Oh, this guy is a maestro.’”
Photo: A24
He credits the easy, funny chemistry between Nicky and Evelyn to both the atmosphere on set—Firstman encouraged his cast to try things out—and to Camp, whom Isgandarov calls a “generous actor.” “People keep saying we should do a spinoff,” he says, “and I would love to do it, but I would get tired of laughing. We would constantly be breaking. That would be the hardest thing to do.” Their storyline also suited him as someone who is “good with moms” and grew up obsessed with Sunset Boulevard’s Norma Desmond. “I was like, oh my God, I’m in love with this woman. Like, I wanna marry her, and I wanna be with her forever, no matter how fucked-up she is,” he remembers with a laugh.
In December, Isgandarov will appear in Jesse Eisenberg’s The Debut, the story of a woman whose life is transformed when she’s cast in her community theater’s latest production. “They are your mentors, but they’re also not,” he says of working with stars Julianne Moore and Paul Giamatti. “Like, they’re your best friends on set.”
