When Joe Apollonio, the 34-year-old New York web comedian with a wild coif of reddish hair, names River Phoenix as certainly one of his favourite actors, all of it is smart. They’ve the same countercultural vibe — to not point out fashionably unkempt coiffure — and a starvation to tackle roles that scare them, and infrequently put their very own autobiography entrance and middle.
“I get shit typically from my associates for not watching sure motion pictures,” Apollonio advised IndieWire at a brewery in Bryant Park (although Apollonio is 5 years sober). “I might say that I’m an enormous fan of River Phoenix’s work and Gus Van Sant’s work. After which additionally motion pictures that Michael Pitt’s been within the 2000s, like ‘The Dreamers.’ I might say these are the 2 actors that I look as much as essentially the most. Apparently sufficient, they’re not comedians.”
Apollonio broke out from his long-running Instagram feed of quippy queer characters and outsize personalities with a solo present at Joe’s Pub in New York’s Noho in summer season 2023, one which put his very shut relationship along with his single mother entrance and middle. He now stars in his pal Amalia Ulman’s quirky ethnocentricity satire “Magic Farm,” which premiered on the 2025 Sundance Movie Competition, adopted by Berlin, and opens from MUBI in theaters this Friday.
In it, he performs Justin, the flamboyantly homosexual cohort of a Vice Media-like documentary crew chasing an influencer in a small city in Argentina. Or, the place they assume is Argentina anyway, till they find yourself within the fallacious South American nation in a city additionally known as San Cristobal.
Apollonio grew up within the city of Babylon, Lengthy Island, earlier than shifting to New York Metropolis after highschool, coaching at Stella Adler and discovering small roles on sequence like “Betty,” “Hacks,” and “Younger Sheldon.”
“In ‘Hacks,’ I performed a circuit twink with Owen Thiele. It was simply two scenes in a single episode. ‘Betty,’ I performed a skater,” Apollonio, a longtime skateboarder himself, mentioned. “Then, I did ‘Younger Sheldon.’ I performed some angsty youthful brother to Mandy, and it was enjoyable. They turned that character right into a foremost character on the spinoff of ‘Younger Sheldon’ [‘George and Mandy’s First Marriage’], however they solid another person.”
Was he disillusioned? “On the time, yeah. Now, I’m over it. If I attempt to play the tape ahead, being in one thing like ‘Magic Farm,’ it’s an edgy sufficient factor for me to nonetheless be myself with issues that I create, and it is smart as a result of it’s on par. It’s below the identical umbrella. To be in one thing that mainstream and only for nuclear households in center America [like ‘Young Sheldon’], possibly I must censor myself and dilute myself down.”
Certainly, Apollonio makes his queerness the focus of his Instagram comedy, the place he has greater than 14,000 followers and self-made video posts courting again a decade, typically outré-costumed and hilariously, grotesquely Facetuned, courting again to 2014.
“I don’t place as a lot worth on [social media] as I used to,” he mentioned. “I might say that’s the way it actually began, after which I believe the place it’s going to proceed is stuff like this and taking my writing and placing it up on stage, or making longer-form movies or motion pictures. Instagram is so oversaturated now with individuals who assume that they’re humorous, and so they can simply make a joke about one thing happening within the zeitgeist. I don’t actually need any a part of that. I wish to make issues which can be helpful to me, and I additionally don’t wish to make a bunch of shit for no cash and simply have it utterly sidelined on this thralling loopy pool of the comedy algorithm, so I’m sort of over it.”
Apollonio’s solo present again at Joe’s Pub extra totally expressed his explicit model of comedy, which is commonly all about his closeness along with his mother. “She had a knee alternative final yr the place I took care of her. It’s sort of a vignette into what my life goes to appear to be sooner or later, which is a bit scary, however I can’t be doing a cross-country transfer proper now except I manage to pay for to take her with me,” he mentioned of the considered shifting to L.A.
“The one relieving factor is everybody has to cope with this shit. She’s a single mother, and I’m an solely baby. It’s at all times been simply us my total life; no actual semblance of blood household has been within the image. It’s simply an added heaviness to it,” he added.
“She thinks my comedy is a bit of bizarre. I impersonate her typically. It’s a central a part of my work,” he mentioned. “It’s bizarre, although, as a result of she’s a Child Boomer, and their notion of Hollywood and performing is way completely different from what it’s now. I’ve been on TV and stuff, however she’s at all times like, ‘When are you going to make it? I want somebody would simply uncover you.’ That’s not the way it works, although.”
Argentine-born Spanish artist-turned-filmmaker Amalia Ulman — the director of 2021’s “El Planeta,” additionally about an solely baby’s too-closeness with their mom — has been good associates with Apollonio for just a few years now, which made it straightforward to solid him in “Magic Farm” amongst an ensemble that features Chloë Sevigny, Simon Rex, and Alex Wolff. “Folks thought Amalia and I have been courting,” Apollonio mentioned. “Possibly we glance good collectively. I don’t know.” (In actual life, Apollonio is courting trans star Bianca Leigh, who stars on Broadway’s “Oh, Mary!”)
That friendship ultimately led to Chloë Sevigny, with whom Ulman had linked and whom Apollonio met at a Maison Margiela celebration earlier than they set to work on the script with producer/filmmaker Eugene Kotlyarenko (a producer alongside Riccardo Maddalosso and Alex Hughes). That was not, the truth is, the primary time Apollonio had encountered the New York Metropolis icon.
“I used to be a barback at this place known as Peel’s within the Decrease East Facet. I used to be like 22, and she or he was sitting at a desk and I needed to pour her scorching water into her tea, and I used to be so starstruck that my palms have been shaking like fucking loopy as I’m pouring the new water. She was simply sort of wanting down. I left the desk and was like, ‘Wow, I fucking blew it.’ I introduced that as much as Chloe. She didn’t keep in mind it,” he recalled.
As soon as manufacturing on “Magic Farm” bought underway in 2023, “We have been filming on this city known as San Antonio de Areco, which is 2 hours northwest of Buenos Aires. Folks go there to trip; it’s sort of like a resort city. It’s very small, lots of horses, lots of road canines, a reasonably desolate panorama. That’s the place we shot the entire film. Then we shot some stuff in New York a couple of month or so afterward,” he mentioned. “I don’t communicate Spanish, so any kind of damaged horrible Spanish I might use to order meals made me really feel tremendous American. I keep in mind the primary day I bought there, I used to be feeling fairly good about myself. I used to be strutting down the road with my aviator glasses on, listening to music. I rapidly bought out of my very own head and realized everybody was gazing me like an alien.”
Whereas “Magic Farm” drummed up buzz at Sundance after which Berlin (“the Germans cherished it”), Apollonio mentioned, “I’m nonetheless ready to see what’s going to come from this,” although he’s engaged on yet one more private undertaking aimed for the stage. “I don’t wish to get an excessive amount of into what it’s about, however it’s going to be one other mother-and-son dynamic present, however it’s going to be far more fictional and far more over-the-top and ridiculous,” he mentioned.
One factor he’s not doing any time quickly, and one factor he has in widespread along with his co-star Sevigny? He’s not shifting to Los Angeles. “I would wish a swimming pool, and a very loving accomplice, which I do have proper now, and some huge cash for me to get pleasure from L.A. I don’t wish to cope with the in-betweens of the leisure business in Los Angeles. It’s excruciating sufficient to be between jobs. L.A. is admittedly cool when you’ve gotten one thing to do. I subletted there just a few occasions, and also you don’t have something happening and your mates are busy, it will possibly get darkish. And also you’re getting gaslit by the climate to be completely satisfied,” he mentioned.
“Magic Farm” is now in theaters from MUBI.