Freddie Mercury role deserving of Oscar nomination, says Queen guitarist
Brian May has hailed Rami Malek’s performance as Freddie Mercury in the film Bohemian Rhapsody as worthy of an Oscar nomination.
The 71-year-old Queen guitarist described Malek’s performance as “remarkable”, revealing he had even begun to mistake him for the late singer.
May served as a creative and musical consultant on the biopic, which shrugged off mediocre reviews to debut with an estimated $50 million (£38.8m) in weekend ticket sales at the US box office.
He said: “We’ve lived with this project for nine years and it’s incredible to see it doing so well. It came out to s **** y reviews, as some of our work has before, but the public has embraced it magnificently.
“Everybody gave 200 per cent, from the actors and technicians to the production team and hair and make up, everyone.
“You don’t get any lukewarm responses. The guy who plays me should be getting awards all over.”
Asked what he thought of Malek’s turn as the Queen frontman, the rock veteran replied: “He’s incredible as well, without doubt he’ll be on the nominations list for an Oscar and well deserved as well.
“He inhabited Freddie to the point where we even started to think of him as Freddie – really remarkable.”
May commented on Malek’s performance while speaking about Philomena, a hedgehog delivered to May’s wildlife charity, the Save Me Trust, on his estate in Surrey in need of life-saving surgery.
He documented the days of worry treating Philomena on his Instagram account.
Philomena first entered May’s life after being found limping around a local resident’s garden.
Save Me Trust chief executive Anne Brummer said: “We could see she had lost the bottom part of her leg, her foot was missing and we could see she had a stump that was raw and an infection under that.”
M sb rummer and may decided the only course of action would be to remove Phil’s leg entirely. The three-legged hedgehog has since recovered and is on the mend.