Rami Malek almost turned down The Man I Love role due to Bohemian Rhapsody similarities
Rami Malek nearly passed up on the chance to star in The Man I Love due to the comparisons between the character of Jimmy George and Queen frontman Freddie Mercury, who he played in the biopic Bohemian Rhapsody.
Rami Malek nearly rejected his role in The Man I Love as he feared it would be compared to his portrayal of Freddie Mercury in the biopic Bohemian Rhapsody.
The 45-year-old actor appears in Ira Sachs' film as gay performance artist Jimmy George but feared that many would regard the film - which is set at the height of the AIDS crisis in New York during the 1980s - as too similar to his Oscar-winning depiction of the late Queen frontman, who died due to complications from the disease in 1991 at the age of 45.
Speaking at a press conference for The Man I Love at the Cannes Film Festival, Malek said: "At first when I read (Sachs') script I said, 'No, I can't do this. There's too many similarities. It could be problematic.'
He added: "There's a certain sense of fear and I started to really think about what I was afraid of. Was it the similarities? Was it the signing? Was it obviously what was going on the period?... And I knew I had to address the fear. If there's anything Freddie taught me, it was 'Address the fear.'"
However, Malek soon realised that Jimmy George - a talented but struggling performer taking on what could be his final major role - was a very different character to the iconic Queen rocker.
The Nuremberg actor said: "Jimmy is just searching for creativity and love and intimacy and joy and pleasure in every moment, and he can sing.
"Does he sing as well as Freddie? No... Was it ever going to be perfect? Didn't have to be. It was just about this element of creating and living in joy."
Malek continued: "There are a lot of people who aspires to be someone like Freddie Mercury, and there are a lot of artists in the world who don't get to that level, but still have an abundance of talent and skill and a world to offer that is maybe unseen by the masses, but communally get some recognition, or they find a way to recognise it amongst themselves, and perhaps that can be almost as gratifying."
Sachs explained that he felt it was important that he and writing partner Mauricio Zacharias penned the script for The Man I Love, having both felt the "rage" and "anger" of living through the AIDS crisis.
The 60-year-old filmmaker said: "Because we lived it... both of us were, I guess in a way, survivors of that time, and also we remembered so much about it that maybe other people couldn't feel."
The Passages director added: "It was a period of loss and great sadness, but there was also this collective spirit of filled with art, filled with joy, filled with pain.
"We had so much that we wanted to convey in that conflict between what was lost and what existed, but it just took a long time for us to be ready and have a perspective on the story we wanted to tell."
