Malek prepared to play Freddie Mercury two years before he got cast

More than 25 years after the death of Freddie Mercury, the flamboyant frontman of the British rock band Queen, there aren't many music fans who don't stomp their feet to We Will Rock You, sing along to the chorus of We Are the Champions or endlessly replay Bohemian Rhapsody.

The story of Mercury, born Farrokh Bulsara to a Zoroastrian family of Indians in Zanzibar, and the legacy of the group he made into an international phenomenon, is now told in the new aptly-titled biopic Bohemian Rhapsody, which opens here tomorrow.

Rami Malek - best known for his award-winning work on TV series Mr. Robot - dons the skintight catsuit and grabs the microphone stick as the lead.

Joining him are Gwilym Lee as Queen guitarist Brian May, Ben Hardy as drummer Roger Taylor and Joe Mazzello as bass guitarist John Deacon.

During our interview at the Four Seasons hotel in Beverly Hills, the 37-year-old US actor talked about how, months after the film had wrapped and is ready for release, he can't let the character go.

"The movie's done, but I still have a hard time moving on because I'm fascinated. I just fell in love with the music and the group and especially Freddie. There were days I would just play songs on repeat over and over and over and over again."

So serious and passionate was Malek about Bohemian Rhapsody, he started preparing even before he got offered the role.

"I was always concerned that if I was going to do it and this was real, it was going to happen in a flash, and I had to be prepared.

"So about two years ago, I began working as diligently as I could in between Mr. Robot and (2017 film) Papillon."

That included working with fake teeth, as Mercury had a very prominent overbite. He asked Papillon's make-up designer to design the teeth.

The songs were the most difficult to master, even though he was not required to sing.

He added: "I was told that I wasn't going to have to sing in this movie, and you hear that and you think, let me just question that. This is going to be impossible not to sing. And every time I had to emulate Freddie in a concert, I had to give it a hundred per cent.

"So I am singing at the top of my lungs, sometimes with Freddie as a backing track and sometimes not. But it somehow slid right in there, almost seamlessly, because I think I had watched the archival footage of him one hundred thousand times.

"So some of the singing is actually my own voice and we have another voice on there as well. But the majority of it is Mr Mercury's and I wouldn't want it any other way."

I think I had watched the archival footage of him one hundred thousand times. Rami Malek, on playing Freddie Mercury in Bohemian Rhapsody

And of course, there were Mercury's incredibly flamboyant costumes to wear - what Malek calls "probably the most amount of hours I've ever spent in costume fittings".

"I think I did maybe 50 hours... I enjoyed every second of it. I have a feeling that I wore them quite well," he said with a laugh.

Mercury once answered the question about what set Queen apart from other bands, by saying they were four misfits, singing to the other misfits in the room.

Malek said he identifies with that, coming from an immigrant Egyptian family and growing up "feeling different" in Los Angeles.

He recalled: "Having a household where you'd go home and speak a different language and eat different kinds of food and perhaps get name-called because of having an unusual name, there's a little bit of that in there.

"But I could identify also in the fact that being on stage or in front of a camera fills me with a certain confidence that I may not have always had in my regular life."

But one thing Malek could not have prepared for were the headline-making problems with Bohemian Rhapsody's director Bryan Singer, who eventually got fired but still retains credit.

Malek was not very forthcoming about the rumours of their clashes. "It's difficult, because Bryan was very, very invested to start early on and at some points he had a very erratic nature.

"I am just very thankful that I had the two years before to prepare myself. That preparation got me through whatever adversities I had during the day."

When pressed, he answered: "This film made a man out of me through some difficult, tumultuous moments. I am very proud of the way I handled myself throughout all of it. And I always thought to myself, no matter what was being thrown at me, what would Freddie do? And that is what got me through any moment."

The writer is the president of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, a non-profit organisation of entertainment journalists that also organises the annual Golden Globe Awards.