Peter Hujar captured a queer Manhattan demi-monde that is now lost to Aids. Whishaw reveals what he learned playing the photographer in a minimalist film being hailed by some as a masterpiece

On 19 December 1974, the writer Linda Rosenkrantz went round to her friend Peter Hujar’s apartment in New York, and asked the photographer to describe exactly what he had done the day before. He talked in great detail about taking Allen Ginsberg’s portrait for the New York Times (it didn’t go well – Ginsberg was too performative for the kind of intimacy Hujar craved). He also described the Chinese takeaway he ate and how his pal Vince Aletti came round to have a shower. And he fretted about not being paid by Elle magazine.

So what did Ben Whishaw, who plays him in the new film Peter Hujar’s Day, do himself the day before? The actor, on a video call from his home in London, rubbing his hands through his hair in a worried manner, says he could probably describe it in “about five sentences”, but after some persuasion attempts to give a flavour. “I got home from filming and I got the chicken that I’d cooked the previous day and eaten half of and I finished it. Well, not finished it but continued eating it and then had a glass of wine and fell asleep at half past nine. Boring. But, um, maybe there’s no such thing as boring.”