Last month, Eldar Isgandarov attended Julio Torres’s Halloween party dressed as Candace, co-owner of the radical feminist bookstore Women & Women First on the sketch comedy series Portlandia. This was an important place to begin our conversation: Isgandarov wanted to explain why his halo of brown curls was a bit mussed. The night prior, he’d donned a wig cap and a long blond wig. He tried to stick close to his friend—who went as Candace’s partner, Toni—throughout the night. “If you separate, it gets tricky,” he says. Otherwise, “they’d think she’s Velma and I’m Lucius Malfoy.”
Isgandarov, an Azerbaijani actor who lives in Bushwick with roommates and a cat named Cheese, has charmed audiences this fall in his role as Nicky, a self-described “aspiring queer philosopher,” in Jordan Firstman’s directorial debut, Club Kid. Calling Nicky the roommate of Firstman’s Peter would somewhat overstate their arrangement: He’s a video game-addicted layabout crashing in Peter’s rent-controlled loft. When Peter finally kicks him out to make room for Arlo (Reggie Absolom), the 10-year-old son he didn’t realize he had, Nicky moves in with their eccentric downstairs neighbor, Evelyn (Colleen Camp). The two soon become an irresistibly silly comic duo.
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.”
His first day shooting was also his first day ever on a professional set; until then, he’d only done student films during his time at Savannah College of Art and Design. His first scene set him opposite Giamatti, with many other actors looking on. After a pep talk from fellow castmate Havana Rose Liu, Isgandarov was off. “It was intoxicatingly fun,” he says. “It was like Disneyland, you know? As a kid you go and you’re like, ‘Oh my God! Magic is real.’”
As a former theater kid, he also thrilled at the chance to work on a film about musical theater. He identifies as a Sondheim fanatic, referring to Sunday in the Park with George and Passion as two of his favorite shows. (As it happens, none but Sondheim muse Bernadette Peters, who originated the role of Dot in Sunday, makes a cameo in The Debut, though she and Isgandarov had no scenes together.) He recalls sitting out a visit to Basement—the notorious, semi-exclusive nightclub in Queens—with his friends in order to watch a proshot at home. “And the good thing about the fact that I didn’t go is that they got rejected at the door,” he deadpans.
Indeed, despite his breakout role in Club Kid, Isgandarov likes to keep a low profile. “I like hanging out. I like a good, real conversation. Not that you can’t have that when you’re partying, but a club can be very overwhelming at times.” Sometimes even a club kid needs a night in.
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