Before taking on a performing artist who is battling AIDs in 1980s New York in Ira Sachs\u2019 latest Cannes feature The Man I Love, star Rami Malek said \u201cI can\u2019t do this, there\u2019s too many similarities.\u201d<\/p>\n
Similarities to his Oscar winning Best Actor role of Freddie Mercury in Bohemian Rhapsody who also suffered from AIDs.<\/p>\n
More from Deadline<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cIt could be problematic,\u201d after he read the script, \u201cThere was a certain sense of fear.\u201d<\/p>\n In the The Man I Love, Malek plays fictional character Jimmy George, a well-known singer and performer, in 1980s New York. He\u2019s just survived a three-week stay in a hospital after an HIV\u2013spell. He ventures on, rehearsing for a stage piece based on Andr\u00e9 Brassard\u2019s 1974 film Once Upon a Time in the East, playing the stormy and defiant H\u00e9l\u00e8ne, who sings with a band.<\/p>\n Set against the 1980s New York, at the peak of Ronald Regan\u2019s America reactionary homophobia, the movie doesn\u2019t focus on the dark side of Jimmy\u2019s struggle with AIDs rather his desire to keep moving, to be unapologetically alive and energized to give all you have left to art.<\/p>\n Dissecting what concerned him about the connection between Freddy Mercury and Jimmy George, Malek pondered, \u201cwas it the singing? Was it what was going on in the period. I knew I had to address the fear. If there was anything that Freddie taught me it was to address the fear. If there\u2019s anything I learned from Ira (Sachs) is that he makes unique cinema unlike any other, and I knew I was in extraordinary hands. If He was choosing me, I could rely on him, not only to depend on him throughout the film, but to elevate it, to push myself, to force myself to race into that fire. When I raced into, I started to discover that these were men who were similar, but they were also worlds apart.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cYou have an icon, a legend in Freddie who really had a destination whereas Jimmy is just searching for creativity, and love and intimacy and joy in every moment. Does he sing as well as Freddie, no.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWas he ever going to be perfect? He didn\u2019t have to be. It was just about this element of creating, and living and joy and New York in that period was a very different time.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI see them as two radically different figures altogether,\u201d said Malek about Freddie Mercury and Jimmy George.<\/p>\n The Man I Love, out of the gate here at Cannes, is already generating Oscar buzz again for Malek. Mubi has the pic offshore, with U.S. up for grabs. The Man I Love earned a ten-minute standing ovation at its world premiere last night.<\/p>\n Sachs was here at Cannes previously with 2019\u2019s Frankie. <\/p>\n Best of Deadline<\/strong><\/p>\n Sign up for Deadline’s Newsletter<\/a>. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook<\/a>, Twitter<\/a>, and Instagram<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Before taking on a performing artist who is battling AIDs in 1980s New York in Ira Sachs\u2019 latest…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":812183,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[9],"tags":[133025,6345,171,133026,329999,405,101719,67,132,68],"class_list":["post-812182","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-bohemian-rhapsody","tag-cannes","tag-entertainment","tag-freddie-mercury","tag-jimmy-george","tag-new-york","tag-rami-malek","tag-united-states","tag-unitedstates","tag-us"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116612593785110074","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/812182","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=812182"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/812182\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/812183"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=812182"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=812182"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=812182"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}