Rami Malek is best known for playing a socially anxious, hoodie-clad computer hacker on Mr. Robot. So when the Emmy-winning actor set his sights on playing Freddie Mercury—the late Queen frontman who was comfortable strutting and preening onstage in catsuits—he enlisted backup.
“I sat down with choreographers before we started, [because I knew] I would need to be as spontaneous as he was in every moment—onstage [and] in his personal life,” Malek explained after an advance screening of Bohemian Rhapsody in Los Angeles on Saturday. Malek ended up clicking with movement coach Polly Bennett (Killing Eve)—and, together, the duo traced Mercurys physicality back to his childhood. Born Farrokh Bulsara to a Parsi family in Zanzibar, the future Mercury took boxing lessons as a child. And at a boarding school in India, he was ridiculed for his prominent overbite. He had four extra upper canines that pushed his front teeth forward and, he believed, gave him greater vocal ability.
“I started to really look at him as a child,” said Malek. “Heres an immigrant kid who grew up in Zanzibar with the name Farrokh Bulsara, and hes struggling to find his identity. He has this overbite, which is something that puts him on his back foot immediately as a kid. Theres something thats still burning inside of him. Hes trying to struggle to find who he is in this new land. . . . Yet theres something burning inside of him, something volatile thats just about to erupt in some way, and he finds an outlet on the stage in front of thousands of people he can identify with.”
The first time Ramek popped in his fake Freddie teeth, the actor instinctively covered his buck teeth with his lips, like Mercury did.
“I felt insecure,” said the actor. “With that insecurity, almost instantaneously, I was sitting up straight. And I thought, Oh, he found so many ways to compensate for his deficits. Or some may call them deficits, I dont, I think hes a gorgeous human being. But it was moments like that that were so informative.”
Malek and Bennett also spent time poring over footage of the Queen frontman on YouTube.
“Sometimes, we would just watch how he would conduct himself in an interview,” explained Malek. “How he would take a drag of a cigarette. When he wanted a beer. How he would lean in to someone. When he was comfortable and when he was not. And then we would work in the studio, putting it on its—him on his feet.”
Mercury was a theatrical performer onstage, gliding back and forth while brandishing his stick microphone as a prop and occasional dance partner. To get that long step, Malek said that Bennett had him “do ludicrous things like ski across the room.” They also spent time studying the performers that influenced Mercury, like Jimi Hendrix and Liza Minnelli—“an odd cocktail,” acknowledged Mercury biographer Laura Jackson, “which helps to explain the showbiz flair that performed such an integral part of his own performing style.”
“Sometimes, we would sit in the dance studio and just watch Cabaret over and over again,” explained Malek—referencing one of the first soundtracks that Mercury owned that featured Minnelli. “Or Bob Fosses [choreography] in Sweet Charity, and you see the elegance that he has and the poise that he has coming from them.”
The film opens and closes with Queens 1985 Live Aid performance at Londons Wembley Stadium—which is still considered one of the best live performances in rock music. Watched by nearly 2 billion people around the world on television, Queen eclipsed the other marquee acts on the bill, including Elton John, David Bowie, and U2.
Dauntingly, Bohemian Rhapsody director Bryan Singer shot the Live Aid concert scenes first. Though Malek couldnt match Mercurys three-plus octave range—the actors voice was mixed with Mercurys and that of the Canadian singer Marc Martel—he studied the performance to nail every minuscule mannerism. “I watched the way his lips moved while he was singing,” said Malek. “and everything thats happening in his throat and his vocal cords.”
Nearly 35 years after Live Aid, the concert is still spectacular to watch. And it was during one of Maleks many viewings that he realized what it was that made Mercury so magnetic and mesmerizing—and what he would have to do to summon the singers essence. “He was giving it everything hes got, every second, every moment. He was trying to make the most of it. He wanted to give everyone at every concert on every date the best experience they could possibly have.”
Get Vanity Fairs HWD NewsletterSign up for essential industry and award news from Hollywood.Julie MillerJulie Miller is a Senior Hollywood writer for Vanity Fairs website.
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