Kaos star Daniel Monks is back home for the premiere of In the Room Where He Waits at Melbourne Queer Film Festival

Australian actor Daniel Monks is in Chicago filming right now. Or, rather, he's in Melbourne pretending to be in the Windy City while shooting the US-based adaptation of Andrea Mara's Dublin-set novel, All Her Fault.

"It's my first main role in a TV series, with an extraordinary cast including Sarah Snook, Dakota Fanning, Michael Peña, Sophia Lillis, Jake Lacy, Abby Elliot, Jay Ellis and little old me," Monks says. "It's been such an amazing experience that's been so creatively fulfilling."

Monks's career is flying sky high. He played queer Trojan hero Nax in the rollicking Netflix series Kaos; appeared in Melbourne-shot comedy Ricky Stanicky with Zak Efron, John Cena and local legend Heather Mitchell; and he has a smaller role in Game of Thrones prequel A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms: The Hedge Knight (he didn't meet George R.R. Martin). He'll soon mark his New York stage debut in a new production of Anton Chekov's The Cherry Orchard at the famed St. Ann's Warehouse in Brooklyn.

Normally based in London, filming All Her Fault means he's in the Victorian capital at just the right time to appear at a Q&A screening for his magnificent movie, In the Room Where He Waits, at the Melbourne Queer Film Festival (MQFF), alongside writer/director Timothy Despina Marshall.

"It felt like pure kismet," Monks says.

The horror of lockdown

Monks plays Tobin, an actor who has also carved a stage career overseas. Flying back to Brisbane to attend his estranged father's funeral during lockdown, he's haunted by menacing visions while stuck in hotel quarantine.

When the world shut down in 2020, Monks was in the preview run of his momentous West End debut, appearing in another Chekov classic, The Seagull, alongside fellow debutante Emilia Clarke of Game of Thrones fame. The pandemic had other ideas – though the show finally went ahead two years later to rave reviews.

"We got shut down by COVID and I was trapped in London for seven weeks," he recalls.

"Then I came back to Australia for what was meant to be three months but ended up being 17."

Marshall's script came to Monks during this hectic period. Ironically, Monks is ensconced in a hotel room while we speak, though there have been no eerie goings-on so far. It's also a lot neater than his real-life quarantine experience, he confesses. "I was just ordering in the most disgusting food and disassociating to TikTok 24 hours a day."

In the film, Tobin likewise endlessly scrolls on his phone, but this time on hook-up apps like Grindr, exposing the sometimes toxic behaviour of men on there.

Now in a long-term relationship, Monks hasn't been on those apps for a long time, but he knows all too well the hurtful and harmful things his character experiences.

"Being a disabled person on there was a very tricky experience to navigate, in terms of disclosure and how you market yourself," says Monks, who is hemiplegic.

"My experience, for the vast majority of the time, wasn't very healthy. Something about these apps, as with all social media, reduces humans to statistics."

But shooting scenes like that for In the Room Where He Waits didn't dampen the incredible experience for Monks.

"Timothy's extraordinary, not just in terms of his artistry, but also his leadership," Monks says. "The fact he and cinematographer Ben Cotgrove made it so cinematic and immersive and beautiful in a nondescript hotel room is really testament to their talents."

Working with a predominantly queer cast and crew helps.

"Often with film crews, they can have a very masculine, straight-male energy, but this was like a queer utopia," Monks says.

"It was a joy, especially while shooting something so intimate and vulnerable. I always felt safe, held and nurtured and would work with Tim a million times over."

Causing Kaos

Non-binary Kaos creator Charlie Covell wrote the part of Nax with Monks in mind, after seeing him on stage in Teenage Dick.

"I'm playing a queer, disabled hero who f**ks and fights, so I was like, 'Sign me up'," Monks says.

"Charlie's an extraordinary human and writer. They're queer but aren't disabled, and they cast three disabled actors in roles where their stories weren't about their disability."

Monks suggests it's no coincidence that it's often directors from under-represented groups — queer folk, people of colour or women who also haven't had the same opportunities or accurate representations of their communities — who are driving incremental change for the better in the industry.

"I've worked mainly with queer people and women, both on stage and on screen, which is the dream: the girls and the gays, the queens and the queers."

He says it was fun up-ending a hoary old trope by playing a bit of a douche opposite Aisha Dee in Hannah Barlow and Kane Senes' Instagram-inspired queer slasher movie Sissy.

"Most of those characters were queer, so there was no longer the burden of the only queer character being the villain," he says.

Monks's relationship with MQFF goes way back, having debuted his award-winning short Charlotte as writer and director there in 2012.

"The festival's support over the past 12 years, as my career has evolved and I transitioned from writing and directing to acting, has been invaluable," he says.

Pulse, his first feature as both writer and lead actor, was the MQFF centrepiece gala in 2017, directed by regular collaborator and close friend Stevie Cruz-Martin. Working from Monks's semi-autobiographical script, the film uses a speculative body-swap twist to explore his feelings about becoming disabled when he was 11.

"Pulse was not traditional fare when it came to queer cinema, especially at that time, so MQFF's support was extraordinary," Monks says. "It was a 10-year process, from 20 to 30, getting this up with next to no money and crowdfunding.

"As a young, queer, disabled person, I felt very alone in my experience, so Pulse felt so much more than a personal success with my amazing film partner, Stevie. I knew how much it would mean to be seen."

In the Room Where He Waits is screening at Melbourne Queer Film Festival on November 18.