USA TODAY International Edition
Rami Malek makes a killer Freddie Mercury
He knows what it’s like to be ‘a fish out of water’
False teeth helped chameleonic actor transform into the Queen frontman in “Bohemian Rhapsody.”
NEW YORK – The similarities between Freddie Mercury and Rami Malek are striking. In fact, they’re guaranteed to blow your mind.
The late Queen frontman and the actor who portrays him in “Bohemian Rhapsody” (in theaters Friday) are both the children of immigrants. Mercury was born in Zanzibar to Parsi parents, who moved their family to England when he was 17; Malek hails from Los Angeles, and his mother and father are Egyptian
And like Mercury, who was teased incessantly as a kid for his real name, Farrokh Bulsara, people still stumble over Malek’s name.
“One time during an interview on a red carpet, I saw it spelled out phonetically (on a teleprompter) as ‘Raw-meat,’ ” says the Emmy winner (for USA’s “Mr. Robot”). “I thought, ‘You can do better than that.’ ”
The parallels “were the things that demystified him for me, and that feeling of being a fish out of water was very relatable,” Malek says. But it was also their differences that drew Malek, 37, to Mercury, who died of AIDS in 1991 at age 45. The rock legend’s rapid rise to fame with Queen and tumultuous life in the spotlight are chronicled in the longgestating “Bohemian,” which was set to star Sacha Baron Cohen before he dropped out of the project in 2013.
Malek has been a lifelong fan of Queen. But despite studying theater at the University of Evansville in Indiana, he didn’t know how to sing, dance or play piano before signing on for the biopic in 2016.
While Mercury was flashy, jocular and bisexual, Malek is reserved, intense and straight. (He’s best known for playing mentally unstable hacker Elliot Alderson in “Mr. Robot” and has recently been linked to his “Bohemian” co-star Lucy Boynton.)
Malek moved to London months before shooting started and started working with a vocal coach. (Although the film primarily uses Queen recordings and Mercury soundalike Marc Martel, Malek’s vocals can be heard in a cappella performances.) To fully embody Mercury’s lithe, theatrical movements, he worked with choreographer Polly Bennett (BBC America’s “Killing Eve”).
By the end of filming, “I was almost choreographing my own pieces,” Malek says.
Similarly helpful were the false teeth he wore to look and sound more like Mercury, who was known to use his hands to shield his distinctive buck teeth during interviews.
“As soon as the teeth went in, I found myself covering up my mouth just like (he did),” Malek says. “My insecurity kicked in, and I found my posture getting better. I realized there was a compensating happening, in a weird way, because I had to try to dignify myself, which was so painful to think of what he might have gone through.”