When Joe ApollonioThe 34-year-old New York Internet comedy with a wild coif of reddish hair, names River Phoenix as one of his favorite actors, it’s sensible. They have a similar counter -cultural atmosphere – not to mention fashionable untreated hairstyle – and a hunger to take on roles that scare them and often put their own autobiography front and mine.
“I sometimes get shit from my friends because I didn’t watch some movies,” Apollonio told IndieWire at a brewery in Bryant Park (although Apollonio is five years sober). “I would say that I am a big fan of River Phoenix’s work and Gus van Sant’s work. And then also films like Michael Pitt has been in the 2000s, like” The Dreamers. “I would say it’s the two actors that I look up to most.
Apollonio broke out of his long-standing Instagram feed by Quippy Queer characters and overized personalities with a solo show at Joe’s pub in New York’s Noho in the summer of 2023, one that put his very close relationship with his single mom Front and Center. He stars now in his friend Amalia Ulman’s snap ethnocentricity satire ”Magical farm“Which premiered at 2025 Sundance Film Festival, followed by Berlin, and opens from Mubi in theaters this Friday.
In it he plays Justin, the flamboyant gay cohort of a vice media-like documentary crew chasing an influencer in a small town in Argentina. Or there they think Is Argentina anyway, until they end up in the wrong South American country in a city also called San Cristobal.
Apollonio grew up in the city of Babylon, Long Island, before moving to New York City after high school, training at Stella Adler and found small roles on series like “Betty”, “Hacks” and “Young Sheldon.”
“I ‘hacks’, I played a circle of twink with Owen Thiele. There were only two scenes in one section. ‘Betty,’ I played a rider,” said Apollonio, a long -term skateboard myself. “Then I made ‘Young Sheldon.’ I played some younger brother of Mandy, and it was fun.
Was he disappointed? “At that time, yes. Now I am over it. If I try to play the band forward, to be in something like”Magical farm“It’s a good enough for me to still be myself with things I create, and it’s meaningful because it’s on level. It’s under the same umbrella. To be in something like mainstream and just for nuclear families in Central America (like ‘Young Sheldon’), maybe I would have to censor myself and dilute myself.”
Apollonio actually makes its queerness the contact point of His Instagram comedyWhere he has more than 14,000 followers and self -made videos that go back a decade, often surpassed and hilarious, grotesque facetuned, from 2014.
“I don’t put as much value on (social media) as I used to,” he said. “I would say that’s how it really started, and then I think where is going to continue is stuff like this and taking my writing and putting it up on stage, or making longer-form videos or movies. Instagram is so oversaturated now. Joke about something going on in the Zeitgeist. I don’t really want any part of that. I make things that are valuable to me, and I Also don’t want to make a bunch of shit for no money
Apollonio’s solo show back at Joe’s Pub more expressed his special brand of comedy, which is often about his proximity with his mother. “She had a knee change last year where I took care of her. It’s a kind of vignette in what my life will look like at some point, which is a bit daunting, but I can’t do a cross -country movement right now unless I have enough money to take her with me,” he said about the idea of moving to LA
“The only easing thing is that everyone has to deal with this shit. She is a single mother, and I’m an only child. It has always been us all my life; no real appearance of blood family has been in the picture. It’s just an extra weight,” he added.
“She thinks my comedy is a bit strange. I sometimes mimic her. It’s a central part of my work,” he said. “However, it is strange because she is a baby boomer, and their perception of Hollywood and spectacle is very different from what it is now. I have been on TV and stuff, but she is always like,” when should you do it? I wish someone would just discover you. “However, that’s not how it works.”
Argentine-born Spanish Artist-Turned-Filmaker Amalia Ulman- The director of 2021’s “El Planeta”, also about a single child’s overly clarity with his mother – Have been good friends with Apollonio for a few years now, which made it easy to throw him in “Magic Farm” among an ensemble that includes Chloë Sevigny, Simon Rex and Alex Wolff. “People thought that Amalia and I met,” Apollonio said. “Maybe we look good together. I don’t know.” (In reality, Apollonio with trans star Bianca Leigh, who plays on Broadway’s “Oh, Mary!”)
This friendship eventually led to Chloë Sevigny, with which Ulman had joined and as Apollonio met on a Maison Margiela party before working with the script with producer/filmmaker Eugene Kotlyarenko (a producer with Riccardo Maddalosso and Alex Hugges). It was actually not the first time Apollonio met the New York City icon.
“I was a bareback at this place called Peel’s on Lower East Side. I was like 22, and she sat at a table and I had to pour her hot water into her tea, and I was so starstruck that my hands shook like fucking like I poured the hot water. She was just kind of looking down. I brought it up to Chloe.
When the production at “Magic Farm” began in 2023, “we filmed in this city called San Antonio de Areco, which is two hours northwest of Buenos Aires. People go there for holidays; it is the kind of a resort city. It is very small, a lot of horses, many street dogs, a rather desolate landscape.” Feeling super American. I remember the first day I got there, I felt pretty good with myself. I struggled down the street with my fling glasses on, listened to music. I quickly came out of my own head and realized that everyone stared at me like a stranger. “
While “Magic Farm” drummed on Sundance and then Berlin (“The Germans loved it”), Apollonio said, “I’m still waiting to see what comes from this”, even if he works with another personal project aimed at the stage. “I don’t want to get too much into what it is about, but it will be another mother-and-son-dynamic show, but it will be much more fictional and much more over-the-top and ridiculous,” he said.
One thing he does not make any time soon, and one thing He has in common with his co -star Sevigny? He’s not moving to Los Angeles. “I would need a pool and a really loving partner, which I have right now, and a lot of money for me to enjoy LA, I don’t want to deal with the entertainment industry’s in-containers. Happy, he said.
“Magic Farm” is now in theaters from Mubi.
