FILM · 2018 · USA
Bohemian Rhapsody
- Directed by
- Bryan Singer
- Runtime
- 135 min
- Studio
- 20th Century Fox, Regency Enterprises, GK Films
268 archived facts 7 topics 1 source Last reviewed Nov 2026
Singer Freddie Mercury, guitarist Brian May, drummer Roger Taylor and bass guitarist John Deacon take the music world by storm when they form the rock 'n' roll band Queen in 1970. Hit songs become instant classics. When Mercury's increasingly wild lifestyle starts to spiral out of control, Queen soon faces its greatest challenge yet – finding a way to keep the band together amid the success and excess.
268 Interesting Facts About Bohemian Rhapsody
Interesting Facts (107)
- #001
Contains a major spoiler — show
Sir Elton John and Freddie Mercury were close friends, but John admits he was furious when he saw how Queen's Live Aid set went down with the crowd and on TV. He apparently marched up to Mercury as the band came off and, only half joking, said: "You absolute bastard, you totally stole it. Nobody will be able to beat that," which delighted Mercury no end.
- #002
In Freddie Mercury's call-and-response with the Live Aid crowd (around the 2-hour mark), the note he held for nearly six seconds became known as "The Note Heard Round the World."
- #003
British choreographer and movement coach Polly Bennett worked painstakingly with Rami Malek on every nuance of Freddie Mercury's mannerisms: every glance, every turn, every bit of on-stage swagger and every move with the microphone had to be exactly right.
Bohemian Rhapsody (2018): Freddie Mercury, portraitImage: Wikimedia Commons · MTV International, CC BY 3.0 - #004
Canadian singer Marc Martel supplied Freddie's singing voice in the biopic; the vocals blend Rami Malek's voice with his and Freddie Mercury's. Malek said in an interview that his singing was seamlessly mixed with both Freddie's and Martel's.
- #005
About 42 minutes in, during the "Bohemian Rhapsody" session, John Deacon says: "I do have to say, the tape is wearing out. It can't take much more." The band did 180 vocal overdubs on the song, and the tape wore so thin it became transparent. In Brian May's words: "This 'legendary' story that people think we made up is true: One day we held the tape up to the light — we were wondering where the top part had gone — and we discovered an almost transparent piece of tape. All the oxide had been erased. It was time to hurriedly make a copy and get to work."
- #006
Contains a major spoiler — show
In reality, Paul Prenter was finally banished from Freddie Mercury's circle in 1986, after it came out that he had wrecked Mercury's Stafford Terrace flat by throwing a wild party there without Mercury's knowledge.
- #007
Contains a major spoiler — show
At about 1 hour 15 minutes, the film shows the making of "Another One Bites the Dust." Arguing with Deacon (Joseph Mazzello), Roger (Ben Hardy) says it sounds too much like disco as his excuse for not wanting to play it. In reality, Roger Taylor's objection was that John Deacon wanted him to tape up his drums for that famous "dead" sound, and Taylor hated taped, dead-sounding drums.
- #008
Queen's Brian May and Roger Taylor performed the rock arrangement of the 20th Century Fox fanfare that opens the film.
- #009
On The Late Show with Stephen Colbert (2015), in the Mike Myers/Christiane Amanpour (2018) episode, Mike Myers said that on Wayne's World (1992) he insisted the song he and his friends headbang to in the car be "Bohemian Rhapsody." The producers didn't think it suitable; Myers held firm and eventually threatened to quit. He got his way, the film was a huge hit, and the song re-entered the charts, climbing to number 2 in the United States, with the film credited for bringing Queen to a new audience. Myers also said that when this film offered him a role, he said yes without even reading the script. Ironically, his character, Ray Foster, is sure no one would ever want to listen to "Bohemian Rhapsody" while driving around and headbanging.
- #010
Contains a major spoiler — show
The film strays furthest from reality in the run-up to the 1985 Live Aid show. In a dramatic scene, Freddie Mercury signs a $4 million solo deal behind the band's back and announces he wants a long break; the others are furious and they go their separate ways. In truth, by 1983, after a decade on the road, the whole band was exhausted and they all wanted a bit of a break. The film makes it look as if they didn't speak to Freddie for years, but they actually began work on The Works in late 1983 and never drifted apart.
- #011
The 1980s Pepsi logo all over the Live Aid scenes is accurate. In 1985 Pepsi agreed to be the concert's main sponsor, helping pay for the stage as well as crowd control and security, and providing facilities and refreshments for the audience, the bands and the backstage crew. The BBC, which handled the worldwide TV and radio broadcast, normally had a strict policy against showing commercial sponsorship, but made an exception given the concert's unique historical and humanitarian nature. Wembley Stadium's owners let Live Aid use it free of charge, and the organizers and all the bands worked for nothing.
- #012
Rami Malek sent Queen a video of himself singing. When he finally met them, they hadn't watched it because it hadn't downloaded properly, so Malek saw their first reaction to his singing in person.
Bohemian Rhapsody (2018): Freddie MercuryImage: Wikimedia Commons · Peter Lefevre, CC BY-SA 3.0 - #013
About 16 minutes in, as Freddie lies with Mary and reaches his head back over to play what would become the famous piano intro to the second part of "Bohemian Rhapsody," Rami Malek really is playing the right notes in sequence, quite a feat to pull off without looking, upside down and backwards.
- #014
Contains a major spoiler — show
One detail the film skips (it isn't really relevant) is that in 1970 Roger Taylor was asked to leave Smile and join a promising band called Genesis. He said no, and Genesis hired Phil Collins as their new drummer.
- #015
Contains a major spoiler — show
(About 1 minute) Near the end of the film, watch for a very brief cameo by the real Roger Taylor and Brian May: in the original 1985 Live Aid archive footage, they can be seen sitting just behind David Bowie and Princess Diana.
- #016
The film is faithful to Freddie Mercury's love of cats. In Lesley-Ann Jones's biography, friends recall that on tour he'd often phone home to talk to the cats, and made sure the TV was left on with live broadcasts so they could watch. Delilah was reportedly his favorite, and he wrote a song about her, "Delilah," for the album 'Innuendo'.
- #017
Contains a major spoiler — show
The actors really play their instruments, but the music we hear is a backing track, except for "Another One Bites the Dust," which the actors performed and worked out together like a real band.
- #018
John Deacon did bring the band the now-famous "disco" bass riff for "Another One Bites the Dust" (inspired by time spent with the funk/disco group Chic), but his lyrics were still very rough at that stage, not the finished words shown in the film. Most of the final lyrics were Freddie Mercury's work; he spent a lot of time on the song, "hammered [at the song] until his throat bled," as Brian May put it. In line with Queen policy at the time, though, the songwriting credit went to Deacon alone.
- #019
As the film shows, Freddie Mercury really did keep an upright piano at the foot of his bed in the band's early days. He'd often wake with a melody in his head, write it down immediately and start shaping it into a song to play for the others. He was famous for writing songs in the oddest circumstances: one story has him sitting in the bath, listening to a dripping tap, and being inspired to write 'Crazy Little Thing Called Love' right there in the bathroom; it became a big hit for the band.
- #020
Contains a major spoiler — show
Live Aid, Queen's set included, was organized by Bob Geldof, who had also organized Band Aid. The film suggests Queen were left off the bill because Freddie Mercury ignored Geldof's early invitations, and were only added at the eleventh hour after a hasty reconciliation. In reality, Geldof and Queen had clashed over the band's decision to play in Argentina and South Africa, which the music world was largely boycotting at the time because of political tensions and apartheid respectively. The band were furious when Geldof famously announced on TV news in early 1985 that Queen were among the acts who'd agreed to play (which also helped bring in many big names), since he hadn't contacted them and it was the first they'd heard of it, and they also had a tour to do. Though they felt emotionally blackmailed, they didn't want to scold Geldof publicly or pull out, so they rearranged their plans for that month. Queen rehearsed for weeks in a local university gym and gave probably the most memorable performance of the whole concert: Freddie whipped up the crowd with his legendary showmanship, and the band stayed on stage for over 20 minutes, despite being allotted only 15.
- #021
Contains a major spoiler — show
(About 1 hour 35 minutes) Paul's (Allen Leech) TV interview after Freddie Mercury cuts him off is entirely made up, but Paul Prenter did give a series of interviews to the tabloid The Sun in which he revealed many of Freddie's closely guarded secrets.
- #022
Contains a major spoiler — show
In the wide shots of the stage during Live Aid, the video screens at the sides show clips from the real 1985 performance, matched to the film's.
- #023
Contains a major spoiler — show
(About 1 hour 35 minutes) The real Paul Prenter was paid £32,000 by The Sun in 1986 for a kiss-and-tell story that ran for several days under headlines like "All the Queen's Men." After selling it he called Freddie Mercury, claiming the press was hounding him, but Freddie refused to speak to him. Prenter died of AIDS three months before Freddie, and some Queen fans call him "Judas" for what he did.
- #024
(At about 1 hour 45 minutes) Freddie Mercury's speech about not wanting pity is based on real events. A few years after Live Aid, as the band sat chatting about everyday things, Freddie joked, "You guys think you have problems," and pulled up his trouser leg to show them the sore on his lower leg. He then told them (as the film shows) about his illness, made clear he refused to be pitied, and said he wanted to spend the time he had left making music. He asked them to keep it secret, and although many suspected it in his last year because of his drastic weight loss, he didn't announce it publicly until the day before he died.
- #025
Sacha Baron Cohen was the first choice for Freddie Mercury, with Stephen Frears set to direct. Frears left over creative differences with Brian May and Roger Taylor, who control the band's music and film rights, and the deal with Baron Cohen fell apart after May objected to a biography of Mercury alone rather than of Queen as a whole; May felt the focus should include the other members and the aftermath of Mercury's death. They disliked the first draft by writers Stephen J. Rivele and Christopher Wilkinson, which Baron Cohen saw as a historically accurate, warts-and-all portrait that didn't shy away from Mercury's hard edges, including his well-documented gay encounters and casual relationships. May felt Baron Cohen was too much of a comic actor to play Mercury well.
- #026
At first Live Aid didn't appeal much to Freddie Mercury and Queen. According to biographer Lesley-Ann Jones, Mercury held a grudge over not being invited onto Bob Geldof's 1984 charity single 'Do They Know It's Christmas', so he needed extra persuading for Geldof's next venture. Geldof chose to call Jim Beach instead and reportedly said: "Look, what's up with the old queen? It's the perfect stage for him. It's the entire world."
- #027
(At about 52 minutes) Rock in Rio actually took place in January 1985, not in the mid-70s as the film suggests. Queen played two nights at the festival, each to more than 250,000 people. On the first night (11 January), Brazilian artists plus Whitesnake and Iron Maiden played before Queen; on the second (18 January), the international acts ahead of them were The Go-Go's and The B-52's. The astonishing crowd singing "Love of My Life" along with Freddie Mercury is real, and can be found online.
- #028
The guitar in the film is a faithful copy of the real "Red Special," which Brian May built with his father in the early 1960s, and the film accurately shows May relying heavily on Vox amplifiers, as he did in those years.
- #029
Much of what Gwilym Lee (Brian May) and Ben Hardy (Roger Taylor) wear are the actual clothes the musicians wore at the key moments shown, Live Aid included; May and Taylor happily opened up their extensive wardrobes, saving the cost of recreating them.
- #030
Almost unrecognizable, Mike Myers arrived on set as Ray Foster and kept up the accent even when the cameras weren't rolling.
- #031
The film never mentions that Roger Taylor and Freddie Mercury shared a flat in 1969 and ran a clothes stall in Kensington Market, before Freddie joined Smile, Taylor's band, in 1970.
- #032
Freddie Mercury was fascinated by Jimi Hendrix's playing and style. After Hendrix performed 'Hey Joe' on the BBC in 1966, Freddie followed him around and within a few months had seen at least 14 of his UK shows.
- #033
A running joke in the film involves "I'm In Love With My Car," and the film actually plays down the friction it caused. Brian May and John Deacon thought it was below par, but its writer Roger Taylor insisted on putting it on the album, and later went further, locking himself in a cupboard until the band agreed to make it the B-side of the "Bohemian Rhapsody" single. That later made the internal row worse, since "Bohemian Rhapsody" became a huge hit and the B-side earned Taylor a large royalty income.
- #034
The Wembley crowd of some 72,000 was built with state-of-the-art digital techniques that let the VFX team duplicate people on a huge scale and in fine detail, so repetition is almost impossible to spot and the crowd moves and applauds differently for each Queen song.
- #035
At around the 9-minute mark, showing off his voice to Brian May and Roger Taylor (who mock his overbite), Freddie says the extra teeth give him more range. In reality Mercury wasn't fully aware of that at the time, since he hated the shape of his teeth; he'd learned the advantages by the time they wrote and recorded "A Night At The Opera," along with the fact that his overbite made vibrato easier for him because he sang in falsetto.
- #036
Gwilym Lee's Brian May was so convincing that when May's children saw the trailer, they had to be told the man on screen was an actor, not their father.
- #037
(Around 44 minutes) Ray Foster (Mike Myers) refuses to release "Bohemian Rhapsody" as a single because, at over six minutes, it's too long, and no station will play a song longer than three. Jim Beach (Tom Hollander) points out that Ray produced Pink Floyd's "The Dark Side of the Moon"; the joke being that eight of that album's nine songs run longer than three minutes, and its single, "Money," was over six minutes long.
- #038
The silver necklace Freddie wears throughout the film turns up around Jim Hutton's neck at Live Aid.
- #039
Contains a major spoiler — show
(Around the 47th minute) The DJ who plays Bohemian Rhapsody "for the first time ever" is Kenny Everett (played by Dickie Beau). Reportedly he played it without his station's permission, convinced it would be an instant smash, then promoted it relentlessly and put it into heavy rotation, playing a big part in popularizing a song considered radio-unfriendly at the time. One of Freddie Mercury's closest friends, Everett spent the 1970s enjoying London's nightlife with him and sharing drugs. By 1985 they had fallen out over drugs and other personal issues, but they reconciled in 1989 as AIDS took its toll on both (Everett had tested HIV positive in 1987). Everett died in 1995 of AIDS-related complications.
- #040
Smile, the band at the start of the film, got its name from Roger Taylor's dentistry studies.
- #041
Ray Foster never existed; he's a composite of several people plus some dramatic license. His name comes from Ray Featherstone, who generally backed Queen while having doubts about the length of "Bohemian Rhapsody."
- #042
(Around the 11th minute) The navy shirt with gold embroidery Freddie wears at his first gig with Smile is the one his mother, Jer, wore earlier at the family dinner; apparently he borrowed it from her for the occasion.
- #043
Rami Malek reportedly spent 50 hours in costume fittings with designer Julian Day, covering everything from 4-inch platform shoes to tight satin trousers and full Lycra outfits.
- #044
(Around the 47th minute) Freddie hurling a brick through Ray Foster's office window is invented, but not out of nowhere: in the documentary Queen: Days of Our Lives (2011), Queen's former manager John Reid recalls Freddie Mercury throwing a brick through a window after Reid walked out on him mid-meal at a restaurant.
- #045
Though often called Queen's manager, Jim "Miami" Beach technically never managed the band; he handled all their contracts and legal affairs and oversaw their companies, assets and side projects.
- #046
Contains a major spoiler — show
The film shows the band barely on speaking terms and not having played a concert in years when the Live Aid offer arrives in 1985. It doesn't mention that they released The Works in early 1984 and then toured the world, finishing just eight weeks before Live Aid; they were superbly well rehearsed by the broadcast, but the film has them needing to make up and get back into playing form.
- #047
When Bob Geldof visited the Live Aid stage set, he was stunned by how closely it resembled the historic concert he'd spearheaded decades earlier.
- #048
Canadian recording artist Marc Martel, who looks a lot like Freddie Mercury, contributed to the film's vocals. Besides fronting a Queen tribute band (Ultimate Queen Celebration), he released a much-praised cover of the Queen/David Bowie duet "Under Pressure," with indie rock artist Kevin Max singing Bowie's part.
- #049
The Live Aid (1985) stage is the biggest set director Bryan Singer had ever built for one of his films, a 100% replica of the original right down to the Pepsi plastic cups on the piano.
- #050
When Rami Malek was approached to play Freddie Mercury, he knew Queen only superficially. To become Mercury he went through very intensive sessions with a movement coach and had to learn to talk with prosthetic teeth.
- #051
When Rami Malek first met Queen at Abbey Road Studios, he was running late. Hurrying up the stairs, he passed a signed photo of Queen and felt as if Freddie Mercury's face were looking at him and saying, "Don't do this." In the end, Malek said, "It really felt inspiring."
- #052
Queen named two albums after Marx Brothers films: 1975's groundbreaking A Night at the Opera (1935) and its 1976 follow-up A Day at the Races (1937). On their Los Angeles tour in March 1977, the band were invited to tea at the home of Groucho Marx, then 86 and the second-to-last surviving Marx brother; they gave him a gold record and, at his request, performed the a cappella '39 from A Night at the Opera.
- #053
Freddie took his stage surname from a line in "My Fairy King," on Queen's first album: "Mother Mercury, look what they've done to me." The song is actually dedicated to his mother, Jer Bulsara.
- #054
(At about 2 hours 10 minutes) In the "Don't Stop Me Now" video over the end credits, the real Freddie Mercury wears a T-shirt from the famous New York gay club the Mineshaft.
- #055
Contains a major spoiler — show
(At about 27 minutes) As the band heads off on their first American tour, the film cuts to an overhead shot of their tour bus, with another bus briefly visible in front. That first bus was carrying the British rock band Mott the Hoople: Queen were in fact the support act on Mott's first North American tour.
- #056
The film got mixed reviews, with its direction, script and historical inaccuracies criticized, but Rami Malek's performance as Freddie Mercury drew near-unanimous praise.
- #057
(At about 12 minutes) At his first gig with Smile, Freddie Mercury struggles to get the microphone off its stand and ends up taking part of the stand with him; singing with a stub of the mic stand attached became one of his trademarks.
- #058
Meneka Das, who plays Freddie Mercury's mother, is only seven years older than Rami Malek.
- #059
(At around 27 minutes) Inside the bus at the start of "Fat Bottomed Girls," Freddie and Brian are playing Scrabble, and Queen really did play a lot of it on the road. Roger Taylor said he and Freddie Mercury were genuinely good at it, while John Deacon and Brian May played less or dropped out of the intense games. Brian once played "lacquers," with the Q on a triple-letter score and the word on a triple-word, using all seven of his letters to score 168 points.
- #060
(At around 1 hour) The party at Freddie's mansion is a composite of stories from the many intimate and lavish birthday parties Freddie Mercury threw over the years, including the "black and white drag ball" for his 39th birthday, attended by 300 revelers flown to Munich for the occasion.
- #061
Contains a major spoiler — show
The film doesn't go into it, but Queen's famous promo video for Bohemian Rhapsody (1975) was made because the band didn't want to go on the BBC's Top of the Pops (1964) to perform the single. The video was shot on a Saturday on 1-inch videotape by a professional crew hired from Thames Television's The Benny Hill Show (1969); the whole shoot took less than half a day, and the finished tape reached the band the next day. A copy was then taken to the BBC for approval so it could go out in Thursday's broadcast.
- #062
(At around 3 minutes) In the film's opening moments, as Freddie Mercury climbs the stairs to the stage, members of U2 can be seen coming off it, easy to spot thanks to Bono's mid-80s mullet.
- #063
Contains a major spoiler — show
One stage of Freddie Mercury's career the film skips: before Smile, he fronted two bands that built his confidence as a rock frontman, first Ibex, later renamed Wreckage, and then Sour Milk Sea. By the time Sour Milk Sea broke up, Freddie was much surer of his voice, his look and his stage persona. Both bands were friendly with Smile, and so with Brian May and Roger Taylor.
- #064
Contains a major spoiler — show
(At around 42 minutes) The film shows all four members of Queen singing, for instance while recording the vocals for 'Bohemian Rhapsody.' In real life bassist John Deacon (played by Joseph Mazzello) didn't sing on any of Queen's studio albums; the producers probably felt all four singing made a nicer picture, just as Queen's own videos did, with Deacon appearing to sing in Bohemian Rhapsody (1975) and others. He did sing backing and harmony vocals live, though, which the film reflects accurately.
- #065
Brian May doesn't play with a plectrum (a guitar pick); he prefers an old sixpence (a pre-decimal coin, i.e. from before 1971).
- #066
(At around 23 minutes) The film suggests Queen resented having to mime on the BBC's Top of the Pops (1964), which they probably first did in February 1974 with "Seven Seas of Rhye." That's true, but the band did later go on the show in person to mime their singles, usually when EMI released a single with no promo video, or none ready by broadcast time. The last time was in 1982, with the minor hit "Las palabras de amor," and that appearance, recorded after the audience had left, became the song's official video. Note: as was standard BBC practice in the 1970s, some of these programs were wiped and the expensive tape reused, so not all the earlier performances survive.
- #067
(At around 1 hour 40 minutes) Talking Live Aid with Queen, Jim Beach lists names on the bill: Sir Paul McCartney, The Who, Led Zeppelin, Phil Collins, REO Speedwagon and so on. He mentions Led Zeppelin and Phil Collins together because Collins drummed for Led Zeppelin that day; drummer John Bonham had died in 1980, which broke the band up that year.
- #068
The film has Freddie hiding away alone in Munich to make his first solo album, Mr. Bad Guy. In fact Freddie Mercury and Queen recorded several albums there between 1979 (The Game) and 1986 (A Kind of Magic).
- #069
(At about 1 hour 40 minutes) Before Live Aid, the film has Mercury's bandmates set a condition for forgiving him: all songs and all royalties credited to "Queen" and shared equally. That did happen, but only later: "The Miracle" (1989) was the first Queen album credited that way, by which time Freddie Mercury had been diagnosed with AIDS and the band knew he was dying.
- #070
Given that Live Aid was raising money for famine relief in Ethiopia, it's notable that Freddie Mercury (born Farrokh Bulsara in Zanzibar to Zoroastrian Parsi parents from India's Gujarat region) was the only true East African who performed that day.
- #071
(At about 4 minutes) Sitting at a bus stop after work, Freddie Mercury (Rami Malek) is writing what would become "Liar."
- #072
(At about the 19th minute) Playing the piano on his birthday, Freddie briefly sings a little of "Lazing on a Sunday Afternoon."
- #073
(About 1 hour 50 minutes) Part of the original audio of Mel Smith and Griff Rhys Jones introducing Queen at Live Aid (1985) can be heard before the scene moves on.
- #074
There are two versions of "We Will Rock You." The one rehearsed in the film is the "standard" studio version from "News of the World" (1977); the one usually played live, including at Live Aid (cut from the film but included as a video bonus), is the "fast" version. The lyrics are the same, but the "standard" version is mostly a cappella over percussion (drums and the crowd's claps and stomps) until the guitar solo, while the "fast" version has guitar throughout and, true to its name, a slightly quicker tempo.
- #075
When Bob Geldof first proposed Live Aid, he said it would be a one-off, "never to be seen again," and asked broadcast partners, including MTV and ABC (US) and the BBC (UK), to erase their tapes afterwards. Only ABC wiped most of its tapes. Years later, given heavy demand and widespread bootlegs online, Geldof agreed to have the surviving tapes (mainly the BBC's and MTV's) collected and restored, and a DVD box set with most of the performances came out in 2004. In 2007 came Queen Rock Montreal & Live Aid (2007) (a re-edited, expanded version of We Will Rock You: Queen Live in Concert (1983)); as of 2020, its Blu-Ray and HD-DVD releases are the only official high-definition video of any Live Aid performance. No official audio of the event, Queen's set included, was released until 2018. The "Bohemian Rhapsody" soundtrack album was the first official audio release of Queen's Live Aid set, though only the songs used in the film ("Crazy Little Thing Called Love" and "We Will Rock You" are left off). In 2019 the Live Aid audio was reissued on streaming services with Queen's songs added; this is the most complete version, with the two songs missing from the soundtrack and the Freddie Mercury/Brian May reprise of "Is This The World We Created?", though it lacks the "Aaay-O" crowd singalong featured on the soundtrack.
- #076
Canadian actor Mike Myers based Ray Foster's light Scouse accent on his parents, who emigrated from Liverpool.
- #077
In reality John Reid parted ways with Queen amicably; the film makes the split a bitter one.
- #078
In Malaysia the film was rated 18+, and some gay and bisexual scenes were cut from cinema prints, including Freddie Mercury telling Mary Austin he's bisexual.
- #079
Contains a major spoiler — show
After Live Aid, Queen recorded and released several more albums with Freddie Mercury ("A Kind of Magic" in 1986, "The Miracle" in 1989, "Innuendo" in 1991 and "Made in Heaven" in 1995), right up to and after his death in 1991. The film doesn't cover that period, so they go unmentioned, and only two of their songs are heard: "The Show Must Go On" (from "Innuendo," released in Freddie's lifetime but not the last album he recorded) over the end titles, and "Who Wants To Live Forever" (from "A Kind of Magic") when Freddie visits the clinic and learns he's HIV Positive.
- #080
UK-based Fang FX made many versions of Freddie Mercury's prominent front teeth for Rami Malek; according to Malek, one set designed as full-size replicas of Mercury's was "massive."
- #081
Contains a major spoiler — show
(About 2 hours 5 minutes) "Ray Foster" is loosely based on the real EMI executive Ray Featherstone. When Foster refuses to back "Bohemian Rhapsody," Freddie tells him he'll forever be remembered as the man who lost Queen. At the end, as "We Are the Champions" plays over the montage, Ray Foster is shown once more at his desk, timed perfectly to the lyric "No Time for Losers."
- #082
Contains a major spoiler — show
(Around 1 hour 40 minutes) The film leaves out Queen's 1980 soundtrack album for Flash Gordon (1980), as well as A Kind of Magic (1986), regarded as the unofficial Highlander (1986) soundtrack, though it does use "Who Wants to Live Forever" from the latter at one point.
- #083
When Fox started to worry about Bryan Singer as director, the studio approached Sir Ridley Scott as a possible replacement.
- #084
(Around 44 minutes) Queen and Ray Foster argue over the six-minute length of "Bohemian Rhapsody" and whether radio will ever play it, a scene that ignores two other artists' success a few years earlier. Lynyrd Skynyrd recorded "Free Bird" for their 1973 debut and released it as a single the following year; the studio original runs over nine minutes, but the single was cut to under five. Don McLean released his signature song "American Pie" in 1971 at 8 minutes 32 seconds, so long that the single had to be split across both sides of a 7-inch record. "American Pie" spent four weeks at the top of the Billboard chart and held the record for the longest number one for fifty years, until Taylor Swift's 10-minute version of "All Too Well" came out in 2021. Like "Bohemian Rhapsody," both have since become classic rock radio staples, usually played in full.
- #085
(Around 1 hour 22 minutes) The camera in the scene where the "I Want To Break Free" video is being shot is an Arriflex 35 BL, the very camera that filmed Freddie Mercury's last video shortly before he died.
- #086
(Around 14 minutes) The song the band records in their first studio session is "Seven Seas of Rhye," which appears on both Queen's debut, Queen (1973), and Queen II (1974); on the first it's only an instrumental.
- #087
The film accurately shows singer/bassist Tim Staffell leaving Smile to join a band called "Humpy Bong," founded by The Bee Gees' former Australian drummer Colin Petersen and Irish folk-rock singer Jonathan Kelly; the name is a two-word twist on the name of Petersen's school in Australia. Despite early promise, thanks to Petersen's industry connections and Kelly's talent, the band released just one single, appeared twice on Top of the Pops (1964) and never played a single live show. Staffell largely left music in the late 1970s and built a second career in model making and animation, on projects such as The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (1981) and Thomas and Friends (1983).
- #088
Contains a major spoiler — show
When Freddie talks about taking a break to go solo, Brian and Roger are furious, implying it could end the band, yet the film never mentions that May and Taylor had their own side projects: Brian's "Starfleet Project," with Edward Van Halen as a guest, and Roger's "The Cross," a hard rock band he fronted as singer and rhythm guitarist. All the side projects had the backing of their record labels, but none came close to Queen's albums.
- #089
Contains a major spoiler — show
The real Live Aid crowd footage was edited, with many posters and flags removed, most notably a big Brazilian flag that's easy to spot in the original broadcast.
- #090
Compare the Live Aid scenes side by side with the real footage and they match right down to Freddie Mercury's moves. Two songs (Crazy Little Thing Called Love and We Will Rock You) were filmed but cut, though, and the crowd differs somewhat from the original.
- #091
Henry Rollins described Queen's Live Aid set this way: "How many thousand people clapping all at once? It was like the Nuremberg rallies with a band at it."
- #092
(Around 1 hour 40 minutes) In Jim Beach's office, Brian May quips, "Who are these four dinosaurs? Where's Madonna?" Madonna did play Live Aid, at JFK Stadium in Philadelphia, with "Holiday," "Into The Groove" and "Love Makes The World Go Round"; her set is remembered as the high point of the Philadelphia show.
- #093
(Around 28 minutes) At the start of the American tour section, as "Fat Bottomed Girls" plays, the title words were muted in the sound mix.
- #094
(Around 1 hour 50 minutes) The film shows the sound engineer pushing up the main fader and sticking a "do not touch" strip of tape on it before Queen come on. In reality, Queen's sound engineer Trip Khalaf sneaked backstage and disabled a set of limiters fitted to the venue's sound system to keep every band at the same volume.
- #095
Tom Hollander (Jim "Miami" Beach) was reportedly so fed up with Bryan Singer that he briefly quit the film before being talked into coming back.
- #096
"Freddie Mercury" was a stage name; the great showman was born Farrokh Bulsara, and "Freddie" started as a nickname during his boarding school years.
- #097
Contains a major spoiler — show
Despite the title, "Bohemian Rhapsody" is never heard in full in the film, only in pieces.
- #098
A scene in which Mary tells Freddie, "I love the way you move on stage. The whole room belongs to you. Don't you see what you can be?" didn't make the final cut.
- #099
At around the 55th minute, a small framed copy of a Marlene Dietrich photograph sits to Mary's left as she stands at the window of Freddie's flat; just before the jump to 1980, she looks at a poster-sized print of the same shot in her new mansion.
- #100
Contains a major spoiler — show
At around the 58th minute, the opera playing as Freddie Mercury phones Mary Austin and asks her to switch her light on and off is "Signore ascolta" from Puccini's Turandot.
- #101
Costume designer Julian Day drew on Cruising (1980) for the 1980s New York gay club scene.
- #102
At around the 32nd minute, discussing the next album with Ray Foster, Freddie says: "We'll mix genres, we'll cross boundaries, we'll speak in bloody tongues if we want to," a preview of what they'd do with "Bohemian Rhapsody."
- #103
After the first official trailer came out (on 15 May 2018), it was criticized for its "lack of portrayal of Mercury's sexuality"; only one such moment flashes by in the trailer, an intimate moment between Mercury and another man.
- #104
According to Live Aid organizer Bob Geldof (around the 2-hour mark), the film exaggerates how much Queen's set boosted donations to famine relief that day; the phone lines really went wild later, after David Bowie finished his set and introduced a film of starving Ethiopians set to The Cars' "Drive."
- #105
Before filming started, Rami Malek went out in public to test-drive his prosthetic teeth and was stunned by how many people laughed, mocked and made comments.
- #106
The scene outside the bar where Queen first meet John Reid (around the 21-minute mark) was one of those directed by Dexter Fletcher, as editor John Ottman confirmed.
- #107
At around the 47-minute mark, Mike Myers's Ray Foster says he has worked with Jimi Hendrix; Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery (1997) has a famous scene of Myers reading Hendrix's obituary aloud.
Production Story (128)
- #108
The film doesn't mention it, but around 1982-3 Freddie Mercury and Michael Jackson spent several weeks working on a handful of songs meant for a future Jackson album. Only demos were ever made, and none came out in Jackson's lifetime after a big falling-out: Mercury found Jackson's behavior too eccentric for him, and Jackson disapproved of Mercury's smoking, drinking, swearing and occasional drug use. One of the songs, "State of Shock," was later re-recorded with Mick Jagger on vocals and became a worldwide hit for The Jackson 5 in 1984.
- #109
The film earned back its whole production budget from UK box office alone; add worldwide ticket sales and other media, and it was hugely profitable for both the producers and distributor 20th Century Fox.
- #110
Sir Elton John and Freddie Mercury were very good friends in real life, but John admits he was furious after seeing how well Queen's Live Aid set was received by the audience and on television. Apparently he stormed up to Mercury after the group came off and said, only half-jokingly, "You absolute bastard, you totally stole it. Nobody will be able to beat that" — enough to please Mercury.
- #111
(Around 2 o'clock) The note Freddie Mercury held for nearly six seconds during his call-and-response performance with the crowd at Live Aid became known as "The Note Heard Round the World."
- #112
Canadian singer Marc Martel provides the vocals for Freddie in the biopic. Along with Rami Malek's voice, they use a blend of his and Freddie Mercury's voices together. In an interview, Malek said his singing was blended seamlessly with both Freddie's and Martel's vocals.
- #113
(At about 42 minutes) During the recording session for "Bohemian Rhapsody," John Deacon says: "I do have to say, the tape is wearing out. It can't take much more." The band did 180 vocal overdubs on the song. As a result of so many overdubs, the tape began to thin until it became transparent. In Brian May's words, "The 'legendary' story that people think we made up is true: One day we held the tape up to the light — we were wondering where the top part had gone — and we discovered an almost transparent piece of tape. All the oxide had been erased. It was time to hurriedly make a copy and get to work."
- #114
(At about 1 hour 26 minutes) At one point Freddie mocks the rest of the band, saying that without him they would all be in ordinary jobs. He claims in particular that Brian, a former astrophysics student, would be Dr. Brian May writing a paper nobody would read. In reality Brian May received his doctorate in astrophysics from Imperial College London in 2007. In the same scene, Deacy apparently tells Freddie for the first time that he studied electrical engineering. In reality John Deacon created the Deacy Amp, which Queen used throughout their career.
- #115
(At about 1 hour 15 minutes) The film shows the making of "Another One Bites the Dust." As Deacon (Joseph Mazzello) argues with Roger (Ben Hardy) about the song, Roger mentions that it sounds too much like disco music as an excuse for why he doesn't want to play it. In reality Roger Taylor didn't want to play it because John Deacon had asked him to tape his drums to give that famous "dead" sound. Taylor hated his drums being taped and his drums sounding dead.
- #116
Queen guitarist Brian May and drummer Roger Taylor performed the rock arrangement at the opening of the film's 20th Century Fox fanfare.
- #117
On an episode of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert (2015), Mike Myers said that during the making of Wayne's World (1992), he insisted that the song he and his friends listened to and headbanged to while driving was "Bohemian Rhapsody." The producers thought it wouldn't work. Myers held his ground and eventually threatened to leave the film. Myers got his way, the film was a big hit, and the song re-entered the charts, rising to number 2 in the United States. The film is credited with introducing Queen to a new audience. Myers also said that when he was offered a role in this film, he accepted immediately without even bothering to read the script. Ironically, his character Ray Foster is certain that nobody will want to listen to "Bohemian Rhapsody" while driving around and headbang to it.
- #118
During the filming of the scene in which the 'Bohemian Rhapsody' guitar solo is recorded, Brian May turned up on the film set unannounced and watched actor Gwilym Lee working on the scene.
- #119
The film takes its greatest distance from reality up to the 1985 Live Aid performance. There is a dramatic scene in which Freddie Mercury reveals that he has signed a $4 million solo deal behind the band's back and wants to take a long break from the group. The others are absolutely furious and everyone goes their separate ways. The truth is that everyone in the band was exhausted in 1983 after a decade on the road. They all wanted a bit of a break. In the film it looks as though they had not spoken to Freddie for years, but in fact they began working on The Works in late 1983 and never drifted apart.
- #120
The 1980s Pepsi logo seen throughout the Live Aid scenes is historically accurate. In 1985 Pepsi agreed to be the concert's main sponsor. They helped cover the production costs of the stage and also paid for crowd control and security. Pepsi also provided facilities and refreshments for the crowd, the bands and the backstage crew. The BBC, which provided the worldwide television and radio broadcast, had a strict policy of avoiding any commercial sponsorship. Because of the concert's unique historical and humanitarian nature, they decided to tolerate product placement. Wembley Stadium was made available to Live Aid free of charge for the duration of the concert by its owners. The concert organisers and all the bands worked for free.
- #121
Rami Malek sent Queen a video of himself singing. When he finally met them, they had not watched it because it had not downloaded properly. Malek saw their first reaction to his singing first-hand.
- #122
(About 16 minutes) As Freddie and Mary lie together and Freddie stretches his head over to play the now-famous "Bohemian Rhapsody" piano intro for the second part of the song, Rami Malek is actually playing the correct notes in order; a fairly difficult skill to perform unseen, upside down and backwards.
- #123
One detail not considered for this film (because it is not really relevant) is that in 1970 Roger Taylor was asked whether he would leave Smile and join a promising group called Genesis. He turned down the offer and Genesis hired Phil Collins as their new drummer.
- #124
The film portrays Freddie Mercury's love of cats faithfully. In his biography written by Lesley-Ann Jones, friends note that after a tour he would often call home and want to talk to the cats, and that he made sure the television was left on for programmes broadcast live so the cats could watch. Delilah was reported to be his favourite cat. He wrote a song about her called 'Delilah' for the album 'Innuendo'.
- #125
Although they actually play their instruments, the music heard in the film is a backing track, except for "Another One Bites the Dust", which the actors played and collaborated on like a real band.
- #126
Although John Deacon did indeed bring the band the now-famous "disco" bass riff for "Another One Bites the Dust" (inspired by spending time with the funk/disco group Chic), the lyrics he brought were in a very rough form at that point, not the final form depicted in the film. The final lyrics were mostly the work of Freddie Mercury, who spent a significant amount of time on the song - in Brian May's words, Freddie "hammered [at the song] until his throat bled." However, in keeping with Queen policy at the time, the sole songwriting credit went to Deacon.
- #127
As seen in the film, Freddie Mercury really did have an upright piano at the foot of his bed in the band's early days. He often woke up with a melody in his head and immediately wrote it down, then began working on it to turn it into a song he could play for the other band members. Freddie was famous for being able to compose songs even under the most unusual circumstances. According to one story, while sitting in the bathtub bathing and listening to the tap drip, it inspired him to write 'Crazy Little Thing Called Love' while he was still in the bathroom, and it became a major hit for the band.
- #128
The Live Aid concert, in which Queen also performed, was organized by original Band Aid organizer Bob Geldof. The film gives the impression that Queen were left off the bill because Freddie Mercury did not respond to Geldof's early invitations and the group was only added at the eleventh hour after a hasty compromise. In reality, Geldof and Queen had disagreed over the group's decision to perform in Argentina and South Africa, which the music world generally boycotted at the time due to political investigations and the apartheid regime, respectively. They were extremely angry when Geldof famously announced on television news in early 1985 that Queen were one of the groups that had agreed to play there (which also secured the participation of many big names), because he had neither contacted them nor had they heard about it for the first time, and they also had to go on tour. Although they felt emotionally blackmailed, they did not want to publicly scold Geldof or withdraw from the concert, so they had to reschedule their plans for that month. Queen rehearsed their set for weeks in a local university gymnasium. Queen delivered probably the most memorable performance of the entire concert; Freddie whipped the audience into a frenzy with his legendary showmanship, and the group stayed on stage for more than 20 minutes even though only 15 minutes had been allotted.
- #129
(At about 1 hour 35 minutes) The TV interview Paul (Allen Leech) gives after Freddie Mercury throws him out of his life is entirely fictional, but Paul Prenter did give a series of interviews to the tabloid The Sun in which he revealed many of Freddie's closely guarded secrets.
- #130
(At about 1 hour 35 minutes) One fact not mentioned in the film but still an important part of Queen's history is that Freddie Mercury and David Bowie had known each other since 1968 or '69. Mercury was, of course, a student at Ealing Art College from the mid-to-late 1960s, and Bowie was also a struggling musician. Mercury had played a few university concerts as an amateur musician and worked in the same circle at roughly the same time as Bowie, so they knew each other (Bowie actually gave a concert at Ealing Art College in 1968). Freddie and drummer Roger Taylor were also running a second-hand clothing stall in Kensington market at the time, so Bowie would occasionally come by and they would help him if he wanted something specific. Bowie's career began two or three years before Queen's, but in the summer of 1981, both Queen and Bowie ran into each other in the cafeteria of an EMI recording studio in Germany while working on separate projects and began talking. Both the group and Bowie thought it would be fun to collaborate on a song, and during a half-hour tea break they immediately wrote 'Under Pressure'. Bowie then went into the studio with Freddie, quickly recorded his lines in a few takes, and then returned to his own studio while the members of Queen finished preparing the rest of the song's instrumental parts. The song was released as a single in the autumn of that same year and rose to number 1 in many countries. The song appears briefly in the film, in keeping with Freddie's time in Germany. Many Queen and Bowie fans think this was Bowie's way of thanking the group for helping him during the difficult early days of his career.
- #131
(At about 28 minutes) When Freddie Mercury calls Mary Austin from a payphone, the truck driver waiting to meet him in the bathroom is Adam Lambert.
- #132
(Around 1 hour 35 minutes) The real-life Paul Prenter was paid £32,000 by The Sun in 1986 for a kiss-and-tell story. The story ran for several days and included headlines such as "All the Queen's Men." After selling the story, he actually called Freddie Mercury and claimed the press was following him, but Freddie refused to speak to him. Prenter died of AIDS three months before Freddie and is remembered by some Queen fans as "Judas" for his actions.
- #133
Rami Malek's movement coach for this role had him study Liza Minnelli in Cabaret (1972), as well as performances by Jimi Hendrix, David Bowie and Aretha Franklin.
- #134
(Around 1 hour 45 minutes) Freddie Mercury's speech about not wanting to be pitied is based on real events. In reality, a few years after Live Aid, the group sat together and were chatting casually about everyday things. Freddie Mercury jokingly said, "You guys think you have problems," and pulling up his trousers showed them the scar on his lower leg. He then told the group (as depicted in the film) about his illness, how he firmly refused to be pitied, and that he wanted to spend the rest of his time making music. He also asked them to keep it a secret, and although many people suspected it due to his extreme weight loss in his final year, he did not disclose it publicly until the day before his death.
- #135
Sacha Baron Cohen was the first choice to play Freddie Mercury, with Stephen Frears set to direct. Frears left the project due to creative differences with Brian May and Roger Taylor, who control the band's music and film rights. The deal with Baron Cohen fell through after May objected to the project being a biography of Mercury alone rather than of the rest of Queen. May felt the focus should be on the other members and the aftermath of Mercury's death. They did not like the original draft by writers Stephen J. Rivele and Christopher Wilkinson. Baron Cohen saw it as a historically accurate, gritty portrayal of Mercury that did not shy away from his hard edges, including his well-documented gay encounters and casual sexual relationships. May thought Baron Cohen was too much of a comedy actor to play Mercury well.
- #136
Initially, Live Aid was not an appealing enough offer for Freddie Mercury and Queen. According to biographer Lesley-Ann Jones, Mercury held a grudge over not being invited to collaborate on Bob Geldof's 1984 charity single 'Do They Know It's Christmas', so he needed extra motivation to take part in Geldof's next venture. Geldof preferred to call Jim Beach and reportedly said, "Look, what's up with the old queen? It's the perfect stage for him. It's the entire world."
- #137
According to the actor himself, Steven Spielberg apparently did not recognize Jurassic Park (1993) star Joseph Mazzello in the role of Queen bassist John Deacon. In a comment on IGN, Mazzello mentioned that Spielberg is one of the people he has regularly kept in touch with since the early days of his acting career. "Steven is probably the person I've stayed most in touch with. We were sending each other a bunch of letters over the past year. Literally still like handwritten letters, which is great. We just talk about everything: our careers and [how] he saw [Bohemian Rhapsody] and apparently he didn't recognize me because I was wearing a wig and had an English accent. He leaned over to his guest and said: 'Who is that? Who is that actor?'"
- #138
(About 52 minutes) The Rock festival in Rio took place in January 1985, not in the mid-'70s as the film suggests. Queen performed at the Rock in Rio festival over two nights, with more than 250,000 spectators attending each night. On the first night (January 11), Brazilian artists as well as Whitesnake and Iron Maiden took the stage before Queen. On the second night (January 18), The Go-Go's and The B-52's were the international acts before Queen. The astonishing crowd singing along with Freddie Mercury on "Love of My Life" is real. It can be found online.
- #139
The guitar used in the film is a faithful replica of the real guitar "Red Special," which Brian May built with his father in the early 1960s. The film also depicts Vox amplifiers being used heavily through May, and accurately shows what he used during those years.
- #140
During production, while filming at the famous Rockfield Farm Studios in Wales, where Queen recorded the 1975 album "A Night at the Opera," which includes "Bohemian Rhapsody," Ben Hardy had the privilege of playing the original tom-tom drums used on Roger Taylor's actual album recording. According to Ben, this was one of the highlights of his experience during filming.
- #141
(About 1 hour 1 minute) At one point in the film, Brian says he will never cut his hair. As of October 2025, Brian May (78), though now fully grey, still has his characteristic long curls.
- #142
(About 7 minutes) The first interaction between Freddie (Rami Malek) and Mary (Lucy Boynton) in the film is Freddie calling the members of Smile after the show and Freddie complimenting Mary's jacket. In reality, Brian May had met Mary Austin and Freddie Mercury had seen her while she was working at Biba. Brian and Mary had gone on a few dates but it was not going anywhere, so Freddie expressed to Brian that he was interested in her. Brian introduced the two, and Freddie asked her out on Freddie's 24th birthday. She said no, but Freddie persisted, and the next day they went on their first date. In the film, when Freddie proposes to Mary, while both are naked and covered with sheets, it is very clearly implied that they have just had sex. In reality, it was Christmas, and Freddie gave her a large box, and inside that box was a smaller box, and inside that box was an even smaller box, and so on until she found the ring. Although in the film they eventually separate and lose track of each other for a while before reconciling as friends, in reality Mary always remained a part of Freddie's life, as she was hired as the band's company secretary in music and publishing matters. She also cared for him during his final illness.
- #143
Most of the clothes worn by Gwilym Lee (Brian May) and Ben Hardy (Roger Taylor) are the actual clothes worn by the respective musicians at key moments in the film, including the Live Aid concert. Both Brian May and Roger Taylor were happy to allow access to their extensive wardrobes to save on the cost of recreating specific wardrobe items.
- #144
Queen bassist John Deacon retired from music in 1997. After Freddie Mercury's death, he performed live only three times and helped complete "Made in Heaven" (the last full album of new material featuring Mercury). His final musical contribution was playing bass on Brian May's "No-One but You (Only the Good Die Young)" on the "Queen Rocks" compilation. However, since the early days (after several unscrupulous managers took advantage of the band's trust), Deacon has kept a close eye on the band's finances and still concerns himself with the matter. In Brian May's words, "But he still keeps an eye on the financial matters. John Deacon is still John Deacon. We don't undertake anything financial without talking to him."
- #145
It is never mentioned that Roger Taylor and Freddie Mercury shared a flat in 1969 and sold clothes at a market stall in Kensington, before Freddie Mercury joined the Smile group, where Taylor was the drummer, in 1970.
- #146
The large black-and-white portrait seen in Mercury's mansion at the beginning and middle of the film belongs to Marlene Dietrich in Shanghai Express (1932). In this portrait, Dietrich looks toward the light with her arms crossed and fingers open. Queen photographer Mick Rock showed Dietrich's portrait to Freddie Mercury, and Mercury loved it.
- #147
Throughout filming, Joseph Mazzello had his own hair permed as well as using five different wigs; an experience he did not expect to be so 'permanent'.
- #148
A running joke in the film involves the song "I'm In Love With My Car." The film actually makes light of the friction this song caused within Queen. Brian May and John Deacon thought the song was below average, but its writer, Roger Taylor, insisted it be included on the album. Taylor later went further and locked himself in a cupboard until the group agreed to use the song as the B-side of the "Bohemian Rhapsody" single — which later made the internal quarrel even worse, as "Bohemian Rhapsody" became a huge hit and the B-side generated a large royalty income for Taylor.
- #149
According to 'Freddie Mercury: A Life, In His Own Words', compiled and edited by Greg Brooks and Simon Lipton (2011), Freddie Mercury said: "Also, I have dreams that one day I'll have a film made of my life story, in which I'll play a major part. I might not be able to play myself in the lead role. Darlings, the things I've done in my life… it'll be totally X-rated, I tell you!" Bohemian Rhapsody was rated PG-13 by the MPAA and 12 by the BBFC.
- #150
The audience of roughly 72,000 at Wembley was created using state-of-the-art digital techniques that allowed the VFX team to do mass duplication on a large scale and at a high level of detail, so that the repetition of audience members is almost imperceptible and the crowd can be seen moving and applauding differently for each Queen song.
- #151
Rami Malek, Gwilym Lee, Ben Hardy and Joseph Mazzello grew close during rehearsals; the bond between them only deepened during production. "There are always films where the actors talk about how tight the cast and crew were, but this was special," reflects Malek. "You felt it every day. We all talk every day, and we finished this film almost a year ago. There isn't a day that we don't communicate with each other." Adds Lee, "Remember, half the band lives in the UK, half lives in America… Since we wrapped at the end of January, we haven't gone more than a few weeks without seeing each other. It's sickening; we can't be apart."
- #152
(At around the 9th minute) When Freddie shows off his singing ability to Brian May and Roger Taylor (and they mock his excessive overbite), Freddie says this overbite allows him to reach more octaves. In reality, Freddie Mercury was not exactly aware of this, because he hated the shape of his teeth; he had learned of the advantages by the time they wrote and recorded "A Night At The Opera." He also learned that the overbite gave him the ability to sing more easily with vibrato because he used falsetto.
- #153
(At around 1 hour 20 minutes) Joseph Mazzello claims he improvised the line "I had a cold last week, if anyone cares."
- #154
Gwilym Lee's portrayal of Brian May was so accurate that when May's children saw the film's trailer, they had to be told that the man was not their father but an actor.
- #155
(At around 44 minutes) When Ray Foster (Mike Myers) refuses to release "Bohemian Rhapsody" as a single, his reasons are that the song is too long at over six minutes and that no radio station plays a song longer than three. Jim Beach (Tom Hollander) points out that Ray produced Pink Floyd's album "The Dark Side of the Moon." The joke is that eight of the nine songs on "The Dark Side of the Moon" are longer than three minutes, and the song released as a single, "Money," is longer than six minutes.
- #156
Freddie wears a silver necklace throughout the film, and it appears on Jim Hutton's neck at Live Aid.
- #157
(Around the 47th minute) The radio DJ who plays Bohemian Rhapsody "for the first time ever" on his radio show is Kenny Everett (portrayed in the film by Dickie Beau). Everett, one of Freddie Mercury's closest friends, would spend time enjoying London's nightlife and sharing drugs with him throughout the 1970s. By 1985 they had disagreements due to the drug-sharing issue and other personal problems, but they reconciled in 1989 when their health began to deteriorate due to AIDS (Everett tested HIV positive in 1987). Everett died in 1995 from complications related to AIDS.
- #158
(Around 1 hour 20 minutes) During the Hot Space press conference, Freddie is reported to have said: "I'm just a musical prostitute." This quote refers to an interview conducted with Rudi Dolezal in Munich in 1984 to promote the album "The Works." You can find the full uncut interview on Queen's official YouTube channel by searching for "A Musical Prostitute." This interview stands out as the most popular Freddie Mercury interview of all time.
- #159
The band Smile seen at the beginning of the film takes its name from Roger Taylor's dentistry studies.
- #160
(Around 1 hour 50 minutes) While Queen wait in their trailer to take the stage at Live Aid, the live audio of Dire Straits' performance of "Sultans of Swing" can be heard in the background. Dire Straits were the band that performed at Wembley Stadium that day before Queen.
- #161
(Around the 11th minute) The gold-embroidered navy shirt Freddie wears at his first appearance with Smile is the same shirt his mother Jer wore earlier in the family dinner scene. Apparently Freddie borrowed it from her for his first performance with the band.
- #162
Although he is often described as Queen's manager, Jim Beach "Miami" technically never managed the band. Instead, he handled all of Queen's contracts and legal affairs and oversaw the band's companies, assets and side projects.
- #163
In the film, when the band received the offer to play Live Aid in 1985, they were not even on speaking terms and had not performed a concert in years. It makes no mention that they had released The Works in early 1984 and then toured the entire world. The tour's final show was only eight weeks before Live Aid. By the time the set aired they were extremely well rehearsed, but the film shows them needing to reconcile with each other and get back into playing shape.
- #164
When Bob Geldof visited the set of the Live Aid scene, he was stunned by its resemblance to the historic Live Aid concert he had spearheaded decades earlier.
- #165
Canadian recording artist/singer Marc Martel, who bears a strong resemblance to Freddie Mercury, contributed to the vocal recordings for this film. In addition to being the frontman of a Queen tribute band (Ultimate Queen Celebration), he also released a highly acclaimed cover of the Queen/David Bowie duet "Under Pressure," on which indie rock artist Kevin Max sang Bowie's part.
- #166
No mention is made of the dispute Queen had with their original manager Norman Sheffield during their early days at Trident Studios, before signing with EMI. The band had signed a contract with Sheffield that effectively paid them a poverty wage. They were allowed to use the studio's state-of-the-art recording equipment in the studio's 'downtime' (that is, in the early hours of the morning) and cut their first two albums that way, but they found they could not survive on the fees paid. This led to a major argument when Sheffield refused to compromise or give them a raise. However, when Jim Beach offered to take over management, an effective deal was reached by buying out their connection to Sheffield and ending their relationship with Trident (which had produced the first albums and released them through EMI under a licensing agreement). Yet years later the band was still angry at Sheffield and wrote the song 'Death on Two Legs (Dedicated to…)' on the album 'A Night At The Opera,' which was a thinly veiled character assassination and described the band's hostility toward him. Sheffield later tried to sue the band for insulting his character (even though he is not named in the song), and although the band settled with him out of court, he inadvertently embroiled himself in the matter because the legal papers he submitted became public knowledge, so Queen fans who had wondered who the song was about now had the mystery solved.
- #167
The Live Aid (1985) concert stage is the largest set director Bryan Singer had ever built for a film up to that point. It is a 100% replica of the original, down to the Pepsi plastic cups on the piano.
- #168
According to the BBC, the film's production was difficult. The film's producers and its lead star Rami Malek had grown tired of director Bryan Singer's erratic behavior, including his routinely arriving late to set or disappearing entirely. In 2017, after the Thanksgiving holiday, Singer was absent from filming for three days, at which point cinematographer Newton Thomas Sigel had to step in and direct in Singer's absence. Reports claimed Singer had left due to a family matter. A few days after this news, 20th Century Fox fired Singer from the film for his unstable behavior on and off set and his conflicts with the production staff. The next day things would get much worse for Singer when 20th Century Fox terminated its Bad Hat Harry production deal with the studio. Fox began searching for a new director to finish the production, with two weeks of shooting left, all of post-production and potential reshoots. The new director, Dexter Fletcher, began production after New Year 2017. In the end Singer still received the directing credit, but the studio took away his executive producer credit.
- #169
"A Kind of Magic" was the album featuring and inspired by songs from the cult classic fantasy film Highlander (1986), recorded after Queen's Live Aid performance. The film includes the song "Who Wants to Live Forever," which also appears in "Highlander." As a result, some of the late Michael Kamen's orchestral music from the cult classic film stands out here, with Queen incorporating it into the song.
- #170
Contrary to what the film implies, Queen never finished the US tour because Brian May became very ill (he contracted hepatitis), so they returned to England and hospitalized him. While May was in the hospital, the group recorded "Sheer Heart Attack," and after Brian did the guitar parts, they released their first single, "Killer Queen."
- #171
When Rami Malek first met with Queen at Abbey Road Studios, he was late. He was hurrying up the stairs and came across a signed picture of Queen along the way. It felt as if Freddie Mercury's face were looking at him and telling him: "Don't do this." Ultimately, Malek said, "It really felt inspiring."
- #172
Queen named two albums after Marx Brothers films: the groundbreaking A Night at the Opera (1935) in 1975 and its sequel A Day at the Races (1937) in 1976. In March 1977, during their Los Angeles tour, the members of Queen were invited to Groucho Marx's house for tea; he was the second and last surviving Marx brother and was 86 at the time. The group gave him a gold record and, at his request, performed an a cappella version of '39 from A Night at the Opera.
- #173
(At about 27 minutes) When the group goes on its first American tour, the film cuts to an overhead shot of the group's tour bus, and another bus is briefly visible in front of Queen's. The first bus was carrying the British rock band Mott the Hoople. Queen was in fact Mott's support act on their first North American tour.
- #174
(At about 45 minutes) When Ray Foster (Mike Myers) hesitates about releasing 'Bohemian Rhapsody' as a single, he says: "What about 'I'm in Love with My Car'? I love it! It's the kind of song teenagers can crank up the volume in their car and bang their heads to… Bohemian Rhapsody will never be that song." This is an ironic reference to the iconic scene in the famous Wayne's World (1992), in which Myers and Dana Carvey headbang to "Bohemian Rhapsody" in a car.
- #175
The recreation of Queen's landmark 1985 Live Aid concert sequence in the film was shot on the first day of production on a replica of the London Wembley Stadium stage at Bovingdon Airfield in Hemel Hempstead. The original Wembley twin towers were demolished in 2003 when the site was redeveloped.
- #176
(At about 23 minutes) When Queen is about to perform on Top of the Pops, they state that they do not approve of lip-syncing instead of singing their songs. When Top of the Pops (1964) began in 1964, the show's producers decided that artists would lip-sync rather than sing their songs. The British Broadcasting Corporation stated this openly when promoting the program. The reason for the producers' decision was that, since the program promoted records, they found it more ethical and honest for artists to lip-sync rather than sing, and therefore viewers and listeners had the right to know exactly how the records sounded.
- #177
(Around 12 minutes) In his first performance as a member of Smile, Freddie Mercury has trouble pulling the microphone off its stand, so he takes part of the stand with him. Singing with part of the microphone stand still attached to the microphone would become one of his trademarks.
- #178
(Around the 27th minute) The interior of the bus filmed at the start of "Fat Bottomed Girls" shows Freddie and Brian sitting at a Scrabble board. Queen in fact played a great deal of Scrabble while on the road. Roger Taylor said that he and Freddie Mercury were genuinely good at it, while John Deacon and Brian May played less or would drop out of intense games. Brian once played "lacquers" for a triple score on Q, a triple word score and using all seven of his letters, earning 168 points in the game.
- #179
The first scene the actors shot was their appearance on stage at Live Aid. "Bohemian Rhapsody" was filmed on the first day, "Radio Gaga" the next day, and so on, until finally a complete tracking shot was made. The actors rehearsed every small movement for five weeks and said they thought the production company wanted to know in advance how they could complete this iconic scene. However, producer Graham King said the reason they filmed it first was the weather. The film was shot in late October and early November, and because London's weather is sometimes unpredictable, he did not want the exterior to be too cold or wet.
- #180
(Around the 1-hour mark) The party scene at Freddie's mansion is a composite of anecdotes from the many intimate and grand birthday parties Freddie Mercury hosted over the years, including the "black and white drag ball" held for his 39th birthday, which was attended by 300 revellers who had flown to Munich for the occasion.
- #181
Although it is not covered in the film, the famous promotional video for Queen: Bohemian Rhapsody (1975) was made because the band did not want to go on the BBC show Top of the Pops (1964) to promote the single with a live performance. The actual video was shot on a Saturday on 1-inch videotape by a professional film crew rented from Thames Television's The Benny Hill Show (1969). The entire shoot surprisingly took less than half a day, and the finished videotape was delivered to the band the next day. A copy was then made and taken to the BBC for review so that it could be included in the broadcast on Thursday.
- #182
Coming to an earlier point, Sir Elton John had pressed Freddie Mercury to tell him what kind of preparations the band had made before their Live Aid performance. Freddie told the highly competitive Elton that they had done a few rehearsals but that they were "just going to wing it on the day." In reality the band had spent a solid week rehearsing in a university gym in Middlesex the week before the concert, because they wanted to make their timing flawless given the limited stage time allotted to them. When Elton saw their performance he realized he had been fooled and was quite annoyed, but in later years he saw the funny side and admitted he should have known better, since he knew Freddie had a mischievous sense of humour.
- #183
(Around 3 minutes) In the opening moments of the film, as Freddie Mercury climbs the stairs to go on stage, members of U2 can be seen coming off the stage. They are easily recognizable by Bono's mullet from the mid-80s.
- #184
(Around 1 hour 22 minutes) The film briefly touches on the video for the 1984 hit single 'I Want To Break Free', which caused great controversy in the US and was banned by many television broadcasters. The track was from the band's 11th studio album 'The Works' and became a major hit across much of Europe and the rest of the world. The video is an affectionate, witty and slightly camp parody of the long-running British soap opera Coronation Street (1960); the band members are dressed in exaggerated fashion like the female characters on that show. While most residents of the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth recognised the reference, many conservative American channels were either unaware of the joke or worried that US viewers would be offended, and refused to show it. As a result, the song was never a major hit in the US.
- #185
(Around 42 minutes) All four members of Queen are depicted as singers in the film; for example, while recording the vocals for the song 'Bohemian Rhapsody'. In real life, bass guitarist John Deacon (portrayed in the film by Joseph Mazzello) did not sing on any of Queen's studio albums. The producers probably decided that having all four members sing would create a nicer image. This mirrors Queen's real-life music videos: in Bohemian Rhapsody (1975) and others, Deacon also appears to be singing. However, Deacon did sing backing/harmony vocals during live performances, and this is accurately reflected throughout the film.
- #186
Brian May does not use a plectrum (commonly known as a guitar pick) when playing the guitar; instead he prefers to use a sixpence (pre-decimal, i.e. the 1971 coin).
- #187
(Around 23 minutes) The film gives the impression that Queen were unhappy at having to mime to their songs on the BBC TV series Top of the Pops (1964); they probably first appeared on it in February 1974 promoting "Seven Seas of Rhye". While this is true, in later years the band appeared on the show in person to promote their singles with a mimed performance. This was usually done when EMI released a single but there was no accompanying promotional video, or at least none available at the time of broadcast. They did this for the last time in 1982 with the minor hit "Las palabras de amor", and their appearance, recorded after the audience had left, became the official Queen video for that song. Note: as was standard BBC policy in the 1970s, some of these programmes were wiped and the expensive videotape reused to record other programmes; therefore, not all of these earlier performances survive.
- #188
(Around 1 hour 40 minutes) While Jim Beach is talking with Queen about Live Aid, he mentions the names of artists on the bill: Sir Paul McCartney, The Who, Led Zeppelin, Phil Collins, REO Speedwagon, etc. He mentions Led Zeppelin and Phil Collins together because Collins was drumming for Led Zeppelin that day, since drummer John Bonham had died in 1980, leading to Led Zeppelin's breakup that year.
- #189
(Around 1 hour 45 minutes) The scene in which Freddie tells the other members of Queen that he is HIV positive just before Live Aid is 100% fiction. It is also unclear when Freddie Mercury first learned he had contracted the virus. Reports range from Freddie finding out in 1987 to finding out much earlier, after seeking medical help in Germany. So the time it took for his illness to develop fully into AIDS and end his life is uncertain. The film ends with the public being unaware of his condition, since Freddie did not disclose his illness until 23 November 1991, the day before he died, which is accurate.
- #190
The film depicts Freddie hiding away alone in Munich while working on his first solo album Mr. Bad Guy. In reality, Freddie Mercury and Queen recorded several albums there between 1979 (The Game) and 1986 (A Kind of Magic).
- #191
Although not named in the film, around 1982-3 Freddie Mercury and singer Michael Jackson collaborated for several weeks on a handful of songs intended for a future Jackson album. None of the songs were released during Jackson's lifetime; after a major falling-out, they got only as far as demo recordings; Mercury left the project after finding Jackson's behaviour too eccentric for his taste, and Jackson disapproved of Mercury's smoking, drinking, swearing and occasional drug use. One of the songs, however, "State of Shock", was re-recorded with new vocals by Mick Jagger and became a worldwide hit single for The Jackson 5 in 1984.
- #192
(Around 1 hour 40 minutes) The film shows Mercury's bandmates making a demand before Live Aid in order to forgive him: all songs, all royalties to be transferred to "Queen" to be shared equally. This eventually happened, but some time later: "The Miracle" (1989) was the first Queen album credited that way. By then Freddie Mercury had been diagnosed with AIDS and the band knew he was dying.
- #193
Given that Live Aid's purpose was to raise money to help famine in Ethiopia, it is striking that Freddie Mercury (born Farrokh Bulsara in Zanzibar, the child of Zoroastrian Parsi parents originally from India's Gujarat region) was the only real East African performing that day.
- #194
(Around 4 minutes) While Freddie Mercury (Rami Malek) sits at a bus stop after work, he writes the song that would later become "Liar."
- #195
(Around the 19th minute) While Freddie plays the piano on his birthday, he briefly sings a part of "Lazing on a Sunday Afternoon".
- #196
(Around 12 minutes) In Smile's first stage performance with Freddie, Brian May tries to correct Freddie, who has misheard the lyrics of "Keep Yourself Alive". This song was one Brian May composed for Smile, but Freddie Mercury made changes once the group became Queen. With Freddie's changes, the song became Queen's first single and the opening track of their first (self-titled) album. As the group progressed, Freddie often put his own stamp on songs composed by his bandmates. As an extreme example, Roger Taylor brought a rough version of a song to the group in 1985 and Mercury eventually turned it into two songs: "One Vision" and "A Kind of Magic."
- #197
(Around 1 hour 50 minutes) A portion of the original audio recording in which Mel Smith and Griff Rhys Jones introduce Queen at Live Aid (1985) is heard before they continue.
- #198
There are two versions of the song "We Will Rock You". The version rehearsed in the film is based on the "standard" version recorded in the studio for the album "News of the World" (1977). The version most often played live, including at Live Aid (not shown in the film but included as a video bonus feature), is the "fast" version. The lyrics are the same, but the "standard" version is mostly a cappella with percussion (drums and the audience clapping/stomping) until the guitar solo; the "fast" version has guitar throughout and (true to its name) a somewhat faster tempo.
- #199
The film rearranges the chronology of certain events for dramatic purposes. For example, Brian May is shown bringing "We Will Rock You" to Queen in 1980, but the song premiered on the album "News of the World" (1977). Conversely, the "Rock in Rio" festival, which Queen headlined, is depicted as taking place in the late 1970s, but it actually took place in January 1985 (only five months before Live Aid).
- #200
(About 8 minutes) In the film, Freddie (Rami Malek) meets Brian (Gwilym Lee) and Roger (Ben Hardy) after seeing them perform with Tim (Jack Roth) in Smile, before Tim leaves. Freddie approaches them and wants to join the band. In reality, Tim Staffell and Freddie Mercury attended Ealing Art College together in the late 1960s, when Tim introduced him to Brian May and Roger Taylor, who went to different schools. Freddie had actually been Brian and Roger's roommate while they played as Smile and had wanted to join the band, but could not because there was no open position. Instead, he joined other bands while Smile worked on their first album, and also occasionally sang backing vocals for Smile. In 1970 Tim left Smile and Freddie was between bands. Freddie took on the role of lead singer, and after three different bassists, John Deacon joined the band in 1971.
- #201
When Bob Geldof first proposed Live Aid, he stated it would be a one-off event, "never to be seen again." In fact, Geldof even asked broadcast partners, including MTV and ABC (US) and the BBC (UK), to erase their tapes after the event. ABC is the only partner that erased most of its tapes. Years later, due to intense demand and widespread bootleg copies on the Internet, Geldof agreed that the surviving tapes (especially from the BBC and MTV) be collected and restored, and in 2004 a DVD box set containing most of the performances was released. In 2007, Queen Rock Montreal & Live Aid (2007) was released (a re-edited and expanded version of We Will Rock You: Queen Live in Concert (1983)). As of 2020, its Blu-Ray and HD-DVD releases are the only officially released high-definition video of any Live Aid performance. No official audio version of the event including Queen's performance was released until 2018. The "Bohemian Rhapsody" soundtrack album was the first official audio release of any of Queen's Live Aid performances; it includes only the songs featured in the film version ("Crazy Little Thing Called Love" and "We Will Rock You" are excluded). In 2019, the Live Aid audio was re-released on streaming services with Queen's songs added. This is the most complete version, including the two songs omitted from the "Bohemian Rhapsody" soundtrack, as well as the Freddie Mercury/Brian May reprise of "Is This The World We Created?". However, this version does not include the "Aaay-O" audience participation sequence featured on the soundtrack.
- #202
After the Live Aid show, Queen recorded and released several more albums with Freddie Mercury ("A Kind of Magic" in 1986, "The Miracle" in 1989, "Innuendo" in 1991, and "Made in Heaven" in 1995), up to and after Freddie's death in 1991. However, the film does not cover this period, and therefore the albums are not mentioned, and only two of their songs appear in the film. "The Show Must Go On" (from "Innuendo", released during Freddie's lifetime — but not the last album recorded) plays during the final title sequence, and "Who Wants To Live Forever" (from "A Kind of Magic") plays when Freddie visits the health clinic and learns he is HIV Positive.
- #203
(About 44 minutes) The members of Queen and Ray Foster argue about the length of "Bohemian Rhapsody" (six minutes) and the fact that it will never be played on the radio. This scene ignores the success of two other recording artists a few years earlier. Lynyrd Skynyrd recorded "Free Bird" for their debut album in 1973 and released it as a single the following year. The song's original studio recording runs over nine minutes, but they released a single version cut to under five minutes. Don McLean released his signature song "American Pie" in 1971 at 8 minutes 32 seconds. The song was so long that when it was released as a single it had to be split across both sides of a 7-inch record. "American Pie" spent four weeks at the top of the Billboard chart and set the record for the longest song to reach number one; that record stood for fifty years, until the 10-minute version of Taylor Swift's "All Too Well" came out in 2021. Like "Bohemian Rhapsody," "Free Bird" and "American Pie" have since become staples of classic rock radio, where they are generally played in full.
- #204
(About 1 hour 22 minutes) The camera used in the scene where the music video for "I Want To Break Free" is shot is an Arriflex 35 BL. The camera seen on screen is the camera that photographed Freddie Mercury's final video shortly before his death.
- #205
(About 14 minutes) The song the band records in their first studio session is "Seven Seas of Rhye," and it appeared on both Queen's debut album "Queen" (1973) and "Queen II" (1974); on the former it appeared only as an instrumental piece.
- #206
(About 1 hour 35 minutes) At one point in the film, Freddie Mercury is reflected in sunglasses focused on a headshot. Queen composed and performed all of the songs for Highlander.
- #207
The film accurately depicts vocalist/bassist Tim Staffell leaving Smile to join a group called "Humpy Bong." The group was founded by former The Bee Gees Australian drummer Colin Petersen and Irish folk-rock singer Jonathan Kelly. The band's name is a two-word variation on the name of the school Petersen attended in Australia. Despite early promise based on Petersen's industry connections and frontman Kelly's talent, the group released only one single, performed twice on Top of the Pops (1964) and never played a single live concert. Staffell largely retired from music in the late 1970s. He had a second career focused on model making and animation, working on projects such as The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (1981) and Thomas and Friends (1983).
- #208
When Freddie discusses taking a break from Queen to pursue a solo career, Brian and Roger are furious, implying the band will probably end; yet the film never reveals that Brian May and Roger Taylor had side projects outside the Queen fold. Brian had "Starfleet Project," on which Eddie Van Halen was a guest musician; Roger had "The Cross," a hard rock band on which he was lead singer and rhythm guitarist. Although all of their side projects received support from the record labels that produced them, none was as successful as the albums Queen released.
- #209
Real footage of the Live Aid audience was edited, and many posters/flags were cut out; most notably a large Brazilian flag that is easily visible in the original Live Aid footage.
- #210
If you compare the Live Aid scenes side by side with the real Live Aid footage, you can see that the staged scenes match down to Freddie Mercury's actions. However, two songs (Crazy Little Thing Called Love and We Will Rock You) were cut despite being filmed. The audience members are also slightly different from those in the original footage.
- #211
Henry Rollins described Queen's Live Aid performance in these words: "How many thousand people clapping all at once? It was like the Nuremberg rallies with a band at it."
- #212
(About 1 hour 1 minute) At one of Freddie Mercury's parties, two girls in hot pants are seen riding bicycles at his home. This is clearly a reference to 'Fat Bottomed Girls' and 'Bicycle Race.'
- #213
(Around 1 hour 40 minutes) During a band meeting in Jim Beach's office, Brian May mocks, "Who are these four dinosaurs? Where's Madonna?" Madonna was on the Live Aid bill at JFK Stadium in Philadelphia, performing "Holiday," "Into The Groove" and "Love Makes The World Go Round." Madonna's set is considered the highlight of Live Aid Philadelphia.
- #214
(Around the 28th minute) At the start of the American tour section, while "Fat Bottomed Girls" plays, the title words were made inaudible in the sound mix.
- #215
(Around 1 hour 50 minutes) The film depicts the sound engineer raising the main fader before Queen takes the stage and placing a piece of tape marked "do not touch" over it. In reality, Queen's sound engineer Trip Khalaf sneaked backstage and disabled a series of limiters installed in the venue's sound system to ensure all the bands played at the same volume.
- #216
Tom Hollander (Jim "Miami" Beach) was reportedly fed up with Bryan Singer, and even briefly left the film before being persuaded to rejoin.
- #217
Despite the title, the song "Bohemian Rhapsody" is never played in full in the film. Only fragments of the song are played.
- #218
A scene in which Mary tells Freddie "I love the way you move on stage. The whole room belongs to you. Don't you see what you can be?" never made it into the film's final cut.
- #219
Before Queen recorded their first album, Freddie Mercury recorded two songs, "I Can Hear Music" and "Goin' Back," under the pseudonym Larry Lurex. This was hinted at somewhat in the film, in which Queen were actually recording their first album and Freddie did not want to stop experimenting and doing something with the available studio time.
- #220
Freddie Mercury was known for his sweet tooth and liked to have a small bowl of 'Smarties' (a British chocolate bean candy similar to chocolate M&Ms but made by Nestlé) on the table in the dressing room before every concert. However, possibly due to an intolerance to the dye used, he disliked one of the colors and asked his assistant to remove and throw away all the candies of that color from the bowl. This may be the source of the brown M&Ms story about Ozzy Osbourne (or Van Halen, as a test to see whether the requirements for a job were being followed correctly) told to Wayne & Garth by Ralph Brown's roadie character in Wayne's World 2 (1993); its screenplay was co-written by Mike Myers, who also appears in this film as the semi-fictional EMI executive Ray Foster.
- #221
(Around the 55th minute) To Mary's left is a small, framed copy of a photo of Marlene Dietrich, while Mary stands in front of the window in Freddie's flat, and just before the transition to 1980, Mary looks at a poster-sized version of the same shot in her new mansion.
- #222
(Around 58 minutes) The opera music playing as Freddie Mercury calls Mary Austin to turn the light on and off is "Signore ascolta" from Puccini's Turandot.
- #223
(Around the 32nd minute) Ray Foster, the EMI executive played by Mike Myers, objects to the title "A Night at the Opera," saying that nobody actually likes opera. Although the film does not mention it, A Night at the Opera (1935) is also the title of a Marx Brothers film.
- #224
Costume designer Julian Day drew inspiration from Cruising (1980) when planning costumes for the 1980s New York gay club scene.
- #225
"Doing Alright," performed in the film by Smile (and briefly a cappella by Freddie, Brian and Roger), stands out as the only Smile song kept as part of Queen's catalogue. It is the second track on their first, self-titled album and was included in their live sets in the mid-1970s.
- #226
Mary Austin did not allow filming at Freddie Mercury's real-life home in Kensington, London. A similar-looking house in the London suburb of Surbiton was used for these scenes. Coincidentally, real-life Queen guitarist Brian May grew up in Hampton, Middlesex, just across the Thames and about three miles northwest of Surbiton.
- #227
(Around 32 minutes) While discussing the band's next album with Ray Foster, Freddie tells him, "We'll mix genres, we'll cross boundaries, we'll speak in bloody tongues if we want to." It was essentially a preview of what they would do with the song "Bohemian Rhapsody."
- #228
(Around 1 hour 55 minutes) The young roadie who hands Freddie his broken microphone during the Live Aid performance may be a depiction of Peter Hince, also known as "Ratty," who wrote a memoir about his time as head of Queen's road crew in the 1970s and 1980s.
- #229
Although John Deacon (born 1951) is Queen's youngest member and Roger Taylor (born 1949) the second youngest, Joseph Mazzello (born 1983), who plays Deacon in the film, is actually eight years older than his co-star Ben Hardy (born 1991), who plays Taylor.
- #230
Before the first shoot, Rami Malek decided to go out in public to test-drive the prosthetic teeth and get a feel for them, and was completely shocked by the laughter, mockery and comments from many people.
- #231
(Around 21 minutes) The scene outside the bar where Queen first meets John Reid was one of the scenes directed by Dexter Fletcher. Editor John Ottman confirmed this.
- #232
(Around the 17th minute) Mary's father says to her, "clever girl," a line well known from Jurassic Park (1993), in which Joseph Mazzello had a leading role.
- #233
(At around the 47th minute) Mike Myers plays Ray Foster, who says he worked with Jimi Hendrix. Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery (1997) features a famous scene in which Myers reads Hendrix's obituary aloud.
- #234
Oscar Isaac turned down the role of Freddie Mercury, saying: "At the time I was saying, 'I don't think anyone would want to see someone pretending to be Freddie Mercury.' And of course everyone wanted to see someone play Freddie Mercury." Bryan Singer had previously directed Isaac in X-Men: Apocalypse (2016).
- #235
(At around 1 hour 30 minutes) When Paul Prenter arrives at his home in Munich with his companions, a blonde woman resembling the Austrian actress Barbara Valentin (née Ursula Ledersteger) is there.
Behind the Scenes (11)
- #236
Jim Beach gave up his partnership in a successful law firm to handle Queen's legal affairs full-time, but he also managed Chris Rea, produced films and TV specials, and worked behind the scenes on stage projects including the Queen musical We Will Rock You.
- #237
Filming at the famous Rockfield Farm Studios in Wales, where Queen recorded the 1975 album "A Night at the Opera" with "Bohemian Rhapsody," Ben Hardy got to play the very tom-toms Roger Taylor used on the album; he says it was one of the highlights of the shoot.
- #238
Joseph Mazzello had his own hair permed for the shoot as well as using five different wigs, an experience he didn't expect to be quite so 'permanent'.
- #239
Rami Malek, Gwilym Lee, Ben Hardy and Joseph Mazzello bonded in rehearsals, and the bond only grew during production. "There are always films where the actors talk about how tight the actors and the crew were, but this was special," Malek says. "You felt it every day. We all talk every day, and we finished this film almost a year ago. There isn't a day that goes by that we don't communicate with each other." Lee adds: "Remember, half the band lives in the UK, half lives in America… Since we wrapped at the end of January, we haven't gone more than a few weeks without seeing each other. It's sickening; we can't be apart."
- #240
Joseph Mazzello says he improvised the line "I had a cold last week, if anyone cares," about 1 hour 20 minutes in.
- #241
Prosthetics artist Mark Coulier, known for the Harry Potter films, The Iron Lady (2011) and Suspiria (2018), worked with Jan Sewell on Rami Malek's makeup. His team took a plaster cast of Malek's face to make small facial prosthetics (including one for his nose) to help Sewell bring out Freddie Mercury's look.
- #242
According to the BBC, it was a troubled production. The producers and star Rami Malek grew tired of director Bryan Singer's erratic behavior, including routinely arriving late or vanishing altogether. In 2017, after the Thanksgiving holiday, Singer missed three days of filming and cinematographer Newton Thomas Sigel had to step in; reports said Singer had left over a family matter. A few days later 20th Century Fox fired him for his unstable behavior on and off set and his clashes with the crew, and the next day things got worse when Fox ended its production deal with his company, Bad Hat Harry. Fox went looking for a director to finish the film, with two weeks of shooting left plus all of post-production and possible reshoots; Dexter Fletcher started after New Year 2017. Singer kept the directing credit in the end, but the studio stripped him of his executive producer credit.
- #243
Contains a major spoiler — show
Freddie Mercury most likely didn't yet know he was HIV positive at Live Aid. In the film, during Live Aid rehearsals, he tells the band he's HIV positive but wants it kept completely secret so he can focus entirely on the music. Exactly when Mercury learned he had the virus is still disputed, but it's generally placed between 1986 and 1987; the band almost certainly didn't know while rehearsing for Live Aid in 1985.
- #244
The first scenes shot were the Live Aid performance: "Bohemian Rhapsody" on day one, "Radio Gaga" the next, and so on until they had the whole set. The actors had rehearsed every tiny movement for five weeks and assumed the production wanted to see early on whether they could pull off this iconic sequence; producer Graham King, though, said the real reason was the weather. The film was shot in late October and early November, and with London's unpredictable weather he didn't want the exterior to be too cold or wet.
- #245
Contains a major spoiler — show
Before Live Aid, Sir Elton John pressed Freddie Mercury to tell him how the band had prepared. Freddie told the fiercely competitive Elton they'd done a few rehearsals but were "just going to wing it on the day." In fact they had spent a solid week rehearsing in a university gym in Middlesex the week before, determined to get their timing flawless in the short slot they'd been given. When Elton saw the performance he realized he'd been had and was quite annoyed, though in later years he saw the funny side and admitted he should have known better, given Freddie's mischievous sense of humor.
- #246
Mary Austin didn't allow filming at Freddie Mercury's real home in Kensington, London, so a similar-looking house in the London suburb of Surbiton stood in. Coincidentally, Brian May was born and raised in Hampton, Middlesex, just across the Thames about three miles northwest of Surbiton.
Characters & Cast (6)
- #247
Rami Malek's movement coach had him study Liza Minnelli in Cabaret (1972) along with performances by Jimi Hendrix, David Bowie and Aretha Franklin, reportedly the main influences on Freddie Mercury's stage style.
- #248
Joseph Mazzello learned bass from scratch for the film. He, Rami Malek, Gwilym Lee and Ben Hardy had just six weeks before principal photography to prepare to play Queen's entire 21-minute Live Aid set from start to finish.
- #249
In 'Freddie Mercury: A Life, In His Own Words,' compiled and edited by Greg Brooks and Simon Lipton (2011), Freddie Mercury says: "Also, I have dreams of one day having a film made of my life story, in which I'll play a major part. I may not be able to play myself in the lead role. Darlings, the things I've done in my life… it'll be totally X-rated, I tell you!" Bohemian Rhapsody was rated PG-13 by the MPAA and 12 by the BBFC.
- #250
Contains a major spoiler — show
(About 8 minutes) In the film, Freddie (Rami Malek) meets Brian (Gwilym Lee) and Roger (Ben Hardy) after seeing them play with Tim (Jack Roth) in Smile, just as Tim is leaving, and walks up asking to join. In reality, Tim Staffell and Freddie Mercury were at Ealing Art College together in the late 1960s, and Tim introduced him to Brian May and Roger Taylor, who were at other colleges. Freddie actually shared a flat with Brian and Roger while they played as Smile and wanted to join, but there was no opening, so he sang with other bands while Smile worked on their first album, occasionally singing backing vocals for them. In 1970 Tim left Smile while Freddie was between bands, and Freddie became lead singer; after three different bassists, John Deacon joined in 1971.
- #251
At around the 32nd minute, EMI executive Ray Foster (Mike Myers) objects to the title "A Night at the Opera," saying nobody actually likes opera. The film doesn't mention it, but A Night at the Opera (1935) is also a Marx Brothers film.
- #252
At around the 17-minute mark, Mary's father tells her "clever girl," a line famous from Jurassic Park (1993), in which Joseph Mazzello had a leading role.
Easter Eggs & References (7)
- #253
Contains a major spoiler — show
(Around 1 hour 20 minutes) At the Hot Space press conference, Freddie says: "I'm just a musical prostitute." The line comes from an interview with Rudi Dolezal in Munich in 1984 to promote "The Works"; the full uncut interview is on Queen's official YouTube channel under "A Musical Prostitute," and it's the most popular Freddie Mercury interview of all time.
- #254
(At about 45 minutes) Hesitating over releasing "Bohemian Rhapsody" as a single, Ray Foster (Mike Myers) says: "What about 'I'm in Love with My Car'? I love it! It's the kind of song teenagers can crank up the volume in their car and bang their heads to... Bohemian Rhapsody will never be that song," an ironic nod to the iconic Wayne's World (1992) scene in which Myers and Dana Carvey headbang to "Bohemian Rhapsody" in a car.
- #255
To mark the film's release, Rami Malek was on the cover of the launch issue of "GQ" Middle East, the magazine of his family's homeland, Egypt.
- #256
(About 12 minutes) At Smile's first gig with Freddie, Brian May tries to correct him for getting the words of "Keep Yourself Alive" wrong. Brian wrote the song for Smile, but Freddie reworked it once the band became Queen, and with his changes it became Queen's first single and the opening track of their self-titled debut. As the band grew, Freddie often put his own stamp on songs by his bandmates; in one extreme case, Roger Taylor brought a rough song to the band in 1985 and Mercury eventually turned it into two: "One Vision" and "A Kind of Magic."
- #257
Contains a major spoiler — show
(Around 1 hour 35 minutes) At one point Freddie Mercury appears reflected in a pair of sunglasses in a close-up, a hidden nod to Highlander (1986), which opens with a similar sunglasses reflection as Fasil (Peter Diamond) flees from Connor McLeod (Christopher Lambert). Queen wrote and performed all the songs for Highlander.
- #258
(Around 1 hour 1 minute) At one of Freddie Mercury's parties, two girls in hot pants are riding bicycles through his house, an obvious nod to 'Fat Bottomed Girls' and 'Bicycle Race.'
- #259
"Doing Alright," played in the film by Smile (and briefly sung a cappella by Freddie, Brian and Roger), is the only Smile song that made it into the Queen catalog: it's the second track on their self-titled first album and was part of their live sets in the mid-1970s.
Deeper Meaning (5)
- #260
Contains a major spoiler — show
At around the 7-minute mark, Freddie (Rami Malek) and Mary (Lucy Boynton) first interact when he goes to see the Smile members after a show and compliments her jacket. In reality, Brian May had met Mary Austin, and Freddie Mercury had noticed her at Biba, where she worked. Brian and Mary went on a few dates that went nowhere, so Freddie told Brian he was interested; Brian introduced them, and Freddie asked her out on his 24th birthday. She said no, but he kept at it and they went on their first date the next day. In the film, Freddie proposes with both of them naked under the sheets, strongly implying they've just slept together; in reality it was Christmas, and he gave her a big box with a smaller box inside, and another inside that, and so on until she found the ring. And while in the film they split up and lose touch for a time before reconciling as friends, in reality Mary was always part of Freddie's life: he hired her as company secretary for the band's music and publishing business, and she cared for him in his final illness.
- #261
The large black-and-white portrait at Mercury's mansion, seen at the start and in the middle of the film, is Marlene Dietrich in Shanghai Express (1932), gazing toward the light with arms crossed and fingers spread.
- #262
Contains a major spoiler — show
There's some debate over how fairly the film portrays Paul Prenter. It casts him as a freeloader who controlled Freddie Mercury's life and career, drove a wedge into the band and ultimately encouraged Mercury's slide into the dissolute lifestyle in which he contracted AIDS, though it also gets some facts about him wrong (he wasn't fired by Mercury until after Live Aid, and he didn't keep Live Aid from him). What's true is that Roger Taylor in particular loathed Prenter and said so loudly, leading to several physical (possibly violent) confrontations during Prenter's time in the job. Since Taylor and Brian May were key players in making this film, and Prenter died of AIDS in 1991 (so can't defend himself), we can only speculate whether he really was the scheming manipulator the film shows or whether Taylor and May's view of him seeped into the script. Many others close to the band, though, have described him over the years as a self-serving parasite, especially after he told The Sun that Mercury was gay and revealed his relationship with Jim Hutton (Aaron McCusker).
- #263
Contains a major spoiler — show
Before Queen recorded their first album, Freddie Mercury recorded two songs, "I Can Hear Music" and "Goin' Back," under the fake name Larry Lurex. The film hints at this when Queen are recording their first album and Freddie, given the studio time available, doesn't want to stop experimenting.
- #264
Freddie Mercury had a sweet tooth and liked a small bowl of Smarties (a British chocolate candy similar to M&Ms but made by Nestlé) in his dressing room before every show. Possibly because of an intolerance to the dye, he disliked one color and had his assistant pick out and throw away every Smartie of that color. This may be the origin of the brown M&Ms story about Ozzy Osbourne (or Van Halen, who used it to check that a venue had followed their requirements) that Ralph Brown's roadie tells Wayne & Garth in Wayne's World 2 (1993), a film co-written by Mike Myers, who plays the semi-fictional EMI executive Ray Foster here.
Career & Awards (4)
- #265
Contains a major spoiler — show
At about 1 hour 26 minutes, Freddie sneers that without him the rest of the band would be in ordinary jobs, Brian, the former astrophysics student, especially: he'd be Dr. Brian May writing a paper no one would read. In reality Brian May earned his doctorate in astrophysics from Imperial College London in 2007. In the same scene Deacy seems to tell Freddie for the first time that he studied electrical engineering; in reality John Deacon built the Deacy Amp, which Queen used throughout their career.
- #266
According to Joseph Mazzello, Steven Spielberg didn't recognize his Jurassic Park (1993) star as Queen bassist John Deacon. Mazzello told IGN that Spielberg is one of the people he's kept in touch with most since his early days as an actor: "Steven is probably the person I've stayed most in touch with. This past year we were sending each other a bunch of letters. Literally still handwritten letters, which is great. We just talk about everything: our careers and [how] he saw [Bohemian Rhapsody], and apparently he didn't recognize me because I was wearing a wig and had an English accent. He leaned over to his guest and said, 'Who is that? Who is that actor?'"
- #267
The recreation of Queen's landmark 1985 Live Aid set was shot on the first day of production, on a replica of the Wembley Stadium stage at Bovingdon Airfield in Hemel Hempstead; Wembley's original twin towers were demolished in 2003 when the site was redeveloped.
- #268
Oscar Isaac turned down Freddie Mercury: "At the time I was saying, 'I don't think anyone's going to want to see someone pretend to be Freddie Mercury.' And of course everyone wanted to see someone play Freddie Mercury." Bryan Singer had directed Isaac in X-Men: Apocalypse (2016).
Sources & editorial notes
Reference databases
- Wikipedia
- IMDb
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