POPSUGAR UK

This 1 Detail Really Completed Rami Malek's Transformation Into Freddie Mercury

15/01/2019 - 02:32 PM

Freddie Mercury of Queen on 9/19/80 in Chicago, Il.  (Photo by Paul Natkin/WireImage)

Controversies aside [1], Rami Malek did a great job portraying Queen frontman Freddie Mercury in the biopic Bohemian Rhapsody [2]. He nailed the vocals [3], he totally got the look, and he convinced the team to allow him to incorporate more of Mercury's sexuality [4] in the film. But there's one facet of Malek's insane transformation that we simply can't get over: he even wore a pair of artificial teeth to re-create the Queen frontman's pronounced overbite, which was due to four additional incisors [5] the singer was born with.

To prepare for the role, Malek was fitted with prosthetic teeth [7] a whole year before filming Bohemian Rhapsody so that he could get used to speaking and singing with them. As the film's hair and makeup department lead, Jan Sewell, told POPSUGAR, she made "so many pairs" of artificial teeth to re-create Mercury's overbite, trying to get the look just right. "It was a big piece of Freddie, so we kept changing them, even by just a millimeter shorter or longer," she said. Though Malek eventually learned to work with his new teeth, he found them pretty cumbersome at first [8], and he tried to copy Mercury's tendency to cover his mouth, as his close friend and personal assistant Peter Freestone noted he often did out of embarrassment [9].

By the end of the project, Malek had gotten comfortable with the prosthetic teeth, and the actor even requested a pair in gold that he could keep after filming wrapped. As he told Ellen DeGeneres [10] during an interview on The Ellen DeGeneres Show, "It's hard to talk in them, hard to sing in them, and hard to kiss in them, but I appreciated them so much by the end of it. I just felt naked without them." Watch the full interview ahead to hear all of Malek's thoughts on his new teeth and on the arduous process of becoming Freddie Mercury.


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https://www.popsugar.co.uk/entertainment/Does-Rami-Malek-Wear-Fake-Teeth-Bohemian-Rhapsody-45678706