Rami Malek talks about his transformation to Freddie Mercury for Bohemian Rhapsody
For Rami Malek playing legendary Queen front man Freddie Mercury in Bohemian Rhapsody was both daunting and incredibly exciting.
“At first it was pure shock. As an actor, I don’t think there’s ever this law of depreciating excitement when things like this happen in your career, especially when you are being asked to play Freddie Mercury,” he says of the moment when he was first offered the role.
“So it’s a moment that halts you in your tracks and it is at once euphoric and thrilling and then there’s a hit of the magnitude and of the weight you have to take on with this legendary man who lives in the hearts of so many people and is revered as being one of the most talented artists of any generation,” he adds, “You can imagine the immense weight of that. Now there’s also some ambitious part of me that gets wildly excited and starts thinking about how to begin to inhabit this unique and magnificent creature.”
“Freddie referred to his childhood as an ‘upheaval of an upbringing’ so I just started to somehow draw a connection to my own life and being a first generation American,” says Malek, also mentioning, “My parents moved to America from Egypt to seek a better life for me and when I told them that I was going to be an artist that was a very difficult stance for me to take. There were aspects of his experience that I could relate to, which somehow allowed it to be lesser of a daunting task of looking at Freddie Mercury the superstar.”
Talking about Freddie’s transformation, Ramek said, “It gives me chills just thinking about it because he is exactly that, he transforms. It’s always Freddie but there are different versions of him, which I think is beautiful. It’s not like he’s hiding anything, it’s not Jekyll and Hyde, they are all him. It’s who he wants to be in the given moment and the given situation, which I find so endearing. I saw one interview where he said ‘on stage I can be the macho man that everybody wants me to be.’ And I think you see that in the 80s, this performer who throws his fists in the air and holds the crowd with the raising of one arm. Whereas in his younger days he was very fluid and erratic when he was trying to find himself and there was more of a whispy-ness to him. So I started to identify that and worked on the progression of the character in that way. What was incredibly useful was when I started to find a team of people who were going to help me assemble him, essentially.”
Brian May, Roger Taylor and Queen’s manager Jim Beach (played by Tom Hollander) are all co-producers on the film and Malek recalls the “earth shattering” experience when May and Taylor first heard and saw him perform as Freddie.
“I went to Abbey Road to record everything, which was such an unforgettable moment for me. It is the holy grail of recording studios and it’s full of photographs of the legends that have recorded there. It’s incredibly inspiring. On my last day, when we got to go back and do a little more recording, I had a chance to play a little bit on the piano that The Beatles used, and it was unforgettable. This film has run the gamut of emotions for me but the highs have been higher than any you could hope for. Sharing what I got to record, which is a tape of me emulating Freddie, with Brian May and Roger Taylor was quite a moment. I thought they had seen it before we met and half way through our conversation I realized they hadn’t. And so I had to watch myself, interpreting Freddie for the first time standing between two of the people who know him better than anyone. You can imagine how intimidating that was.”
And what was their reaction? “Roger was characteristically cool and reserved and Brian, who I had noticed had been eyeing me up and down, came out with such a compliment that I was quite moved by.”
Malek was born in Los Angeles, California. He won an Emmy, and has twice been nominated for a Golden Globe, for his role as Elliot Alderson in the critically acclaimed psychological TV drama Mr. Robot.
His films include Night at the Museum, Larry Crowne, Battleship, The Master, The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 2, Ain’t Them Bodies Saints, Short Term 12, Old Boy, Need for Speed, Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb and Papillon.
