Rami Malek had been itching to work with Ira Sachs for some time — going as far as to ask his representatives to get him a meeting with the filmmaker. But when the script for Sachs’ next film, “The Man I Love” — about a New York theater performer navigating life, love and his devotion to his art after being diagnosed with AIDS — came his way, Malek hesitated before agreeing to sign on, because he was fresh from his Oscar-winning portrayal of Freddie Mercury in “Bohemian Rhapsody.”
“When I read the script, I said, ‘I can’t do this. There’s too many similarities. It could be problematic,'” Malek told reporters on Thursday at a press conference following the film’s world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival.
“There was a certain sense of fear,” Malek explained. “And I started to really think about what I was afraid of. Was it the similarities? Was it the singing? Was it what was going on in the period? … I knew I had to address the fear. If there’s anything Freddie taught me it was [to] address the fear.”
As Malek contemplated what to do, he kept in mind that Sachs “makes unique cinema unlike any other.”
“I knew I was in extraordinary hands, and that if he was choosing me, I could rely on him,” he said of the “Passages” and “Keep the Lights On” director. “Not only to depend on him throughout the film, but to elevate it, to push myself, to force myself to race into that fire. And when I raced into it, I started to discover that these men were similar, but they were also worlds apart.”
