As the film awards season is well underway, the movie Bohemian Rhapsody has finally triumphed, with its actor Rami Malek winning a SAG award for best male actor in the Hollywood ceremony on 27 January.
But the film – about the life and times of the band Queen, and its lead singer Freddie Mercury – has been eight years in the making and plagued with controversy.
The director allegedly being involved in a sex scandal, A-list actors quitting and the film accused of white-washing Mercury’s lifestyle are just some of the issues that have arisen during the production.
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With the news last week that a major LGBT awards ceremony – Glaad’s annual event – was withdrawing the film as a nomination in five categories due to allegations against the director, why is the film’s history so chequered?
2011: The beginning – and Sacha Baron Cohen
The idea for the film was a project fronted by Brian May, one of the original members of the band. He decided that the starting point should be from when Mercury joined the band in 1975, up until the moment Queen played their iconic role in Live Aid in 1985.
The first name attached to the project was Sacha Baron Cohen. In 2011, in a genius casting move, he was confirmed to play Mercury. The Crown creator Peter Morgan would be writing the script, while Graham King would be co-producing.
But Baron Cohen didn’t last long, and in July 2013, quit due to “creative differences”. Reports at the time suggested that he had wanted a bit more of a realistic, gritty storyline that focused on Mercury, but the band weren’t happy with that.
Speaking with Howard Stern on his radio show in 2016, Baron Cohen revealed: “A member of the band – I won’t say who – said: ‘You know, this is such a great movie because it’s got such an amazing thing that happens in the middle.’
And I go: ‘What happens in the middle of the movie?’ He goes: ‘You know, Freddie dies.’ … I go: ‘What happens in the second half of the movie?’ He goes: ‘We see how the band carries on from strength to strength.’
“I said: ‘Listen, not one person is going to see a movie where the lead character dies from Aids and then you see how the band carries on.’
“There are amazing stories about Freddie Mercury. The guy was wild. There are stories of little people walking around parties with plates of cocaine on their heads!”
The band’s drummer, Roger Taylor, later said the comedian was let go because Queen’s surviving members did not want the film to be “a joke”. “There was a lot of talk about Sacha and stuff. It was never really on,” he told the Associated Press. “I don’t think he took it seriously enough — didn’t take Freddie seriously enough.”
2013: The next line up – Ben Whishaw and Dexter Fletcher
In November 2013, May said that Bond star Ben Whishaw was being lined up to play Mercury: “We’ve been talking to Ben and we’re very keen and last time we spoke he was very keen. Casting Freddie is hard. It’s a lot of things we need, but we need to get his essence.”
However, Whishaw only lasted a few months on the project, and told Time Out London in August 2014: “Actually, I don’t know what’s happening, it seems to be on the back-burner. It was going, then there were problems getting the script working.”
In the meantime, in December 2014, Bugsy Malone star (now director) Dexter Fletcher was announced as the new director of the film, but he quit in March 2014, apparently due to creative disagreements with King.
Things weren’t much better in 2015, as the film now appeared to still be lead-less and director-less. There were rumours that Baron Cohen had rejoined the film or desperate hopes that Whishaw might return. Neither of these scenarios materialised. Finally, Mercury was cast as Mr Robot‘s Rami Malek.
2016: Director issues
In 2016, Bryan Singer was announced as the new director and filming began. However, in December 2017, it was reported that the production had been halted as Singer had gone AWOL. The Hollywood Reporter said Singer had not returned to the set after Thanksgiving week, and 20th Century Fox said that cameras had been stopped due to the “unexpected unavailability”of the director.
There are varying stories as to what eventually led to Singer being fired a few days later. One source told the BBC it was due to “a personal health matter concerning Bryan and his family” – Singer said his mother was ill – while Malek told Empire magazine that the two had “clashed” on set.
2017: The return of Fletcher
On 6 December 2017, Dexter Fletcher was announced as Singer’s replacement and filming resumed on 15 December.
Fletcher later estimated that two-thirds of the principal photography had been completed when he joined the production and told Indie Wire: “I came into the last few weeks of principal photography and editing and the bits and pieces like that… I was looking at two complete [acts] in a good film, and [I had to] not let it down.”
2018: The release and reviews
The film was released on 23 October 2018, and the critics were divided. The Hollywood Reporter’s Sheri Linden agreed that Bohemian Rhapsody “doesn’t acknowledge the tale’s darker facets” and said “this conventional portrait of an unconventional band offers nothing to chew on”.
Rebecca Lewis at the Metro said: “The problem arises in that the script never delves deep enough to escape what is essentially a Wikipedia entry. Nowhere is this clearer than the second act, a stage of Freddie’s life that the film refuses to dive into.”
Other critics claimed Mercury’s life as a gay man was too understated. Aja Romano in Vox wrote: “What it really wants to be is a Queen concert, and what it really wants Freddie Mercury to be is a rock god instead of a real, queer human man.
“The result is far more hurtful than your average unconsciously homophobic film. Bohemian Rhapsody is a movie that consciously tries to position a gay man at its centre while strategically disengaging with the ‘gay’ part as much as it can, flitting briefly over his emotional and sexual experiences and fixating on his platonic relationship with an ex-girlfriend instead.”
2019: Singer allegations
In January 2019, Singer was accused of sexually assaulting and sleeping with a string of under-age boys.
According to an article in The Atlantic, two men alleged they had sex with him when he knew they were under 18, the Californian age of consent.
Singer denied the allegations and said it was a “homophobic smear” timed to exploit Bohemian Rhapsody’s success.
However, Glaad chose to remove the film from their LGBT awards last week, and said in a statement: “This week’s story in The Atlantic documenting unspeakable harms endured by young men and teenage boys brought to light a reality that cannot be ignored or even tacitly rewarded.
“Singer’s response to The Atlantic story wrongfully used ‘homophobia’ to deflect from sexual assault allegations and Glaad urges the media and the industry at large to not gloss over the fact that survivors of sexual assault should be put first.”
“Glaad is a media monitoring organisation which hands out awards each year to recognise outstanding representations of the LGBT community in the media.”
