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Looking for power when you have already got it is horrible: Patrick Stewart on Bryan Singer
Veteran actor Patrick Stewart, who worked with filmmaker Bryan Singer on the X-Men franchise, has opened up about the director’s hunger for power and the need to control other people.
The 78-year-old actor feels such intimidating behaviour on the sets is “horrible”. ‘‘This sense of... looking for power when you’ve already got it, and you don’t actually need it, looking for control over other people, who you can dominate — it’s horrible,” Stewart told Daily Telegraph.
Singer was fired from Bohemian Rhapsody in December 2017 due to repeated failures to show up on the set, which brought the production to a halt. Dexter Fletcher later replaced him as the director but Singer retains the credit.
Actor Rami Malek, who played Queen frontman Freddie Mercury in the biopic, had recently said that his experience of working on the film with Singer was “not pleasant”. Stewart confirmed that his experience with Singer was somewhat similar to what Malek went through.
‘‘I’ve experienced that too with him. There have been problems in the past,” he said. When asked if Singer would often be absent on key days, the actor added, ‘‘Yeah. Or turning up and not shooting. It was very difficult. He’s such a talented individual in the world of making movies — and, it would appear, extremely untalented and cruel in other respects,” the Star Trek actor said. ‘‘And it makes me profoundly sad for potential victims, or possible victims, as well as Bryan himself. Most of the experience with Bryan I really enjoyed. But what is happening is so good,” Stewart added, alluding to the recent Atlantic article where four men claimed to have been sexually exploited by Singer when they were underage.