Malek makes it look so easy. His portrayal of the Queen legend is so relaistic even the band themselves have admitted they sometimes forgot they were watching an actor. The young star has already received Best Actor nominations for the 2019 Golden Globes and Screen Actors Guild and more award season glory looks inevitable. Audiences have felt the same and blasted the biopic past a blockbusting $600million at the box office. But Malek revealed certain moments during the shoot were particulary hard.
Revealed is probably the best word for the entire situation since it involves some of Freddie’s most iconic, but undeniably revealing costumes.
During the height of glam rock, Freddie revelled in a series of outrageous leotards and Malek singled out one as particularly terrifying.
He told The Wrap: “There was one thing I was concerned wearing, and that was the leotard. There’s a harlequin one, but the one I was worried about the most was the sequin one because it really leaves nothing to the imagination. Not only are you walking out there basically naked, but then you have to strut on stage with the utmost confidence.”
He should probably be grateful they didn’t recreate the white one with the black lightning bolt…
Malek, however, amply displayed his fearless approach to the emotional and physical aspects of the role and he applied the same to the wardrobe.
He added: “At one point, you just have to say, ‘Well, you gotta do it. If you’re going to emulate him, there is no fear on stage.’”
The young actor also realised that it was all part of the extraordinary contradictions and idiosyncracies that made Freddie such an icon.
He told the New Yorker: “When I started to embrace that aspect of him — the mischief, the joy, the freedom, and the lack of any inhibition, or so it seems — that’s when the real spontaneity started to occur for me. Basically, the ownership of it. And that was him — tremendous ownership of who he was.”
By the end of the shoot Malek had even developed a connection to the costumes and admitted he asked the costume department to make him a copy of the leotard in red sequins to take home as a memento.
Proving how much he embraced the role, he also had his fake teeth cast in gold.
Freddie would have approved…
BOHEMIAN RHAPSODY IS OUT NOW.