He was the odds-on favorite and he pulled it off: first-time nominee Rami Malek took home the Best Actor Oscar for his performance as Freddie Mercury in the Academy-beloved biopic “Bohemian Rhapsody,” which had already won Best Sound Editing, Best Sound Mixing and Best Film Editing earlier in the night.
The 37-year-old Malek, otherwise best known for his role on the series “Mr. Robot,” also won a Golden Globe, SAG, Critic’s Choice and BAFTA award for playing the flamboyant lead singer of Queen — a performance strangely showcased, before the Oscar was given, in a singing clip that featured mostly the late Mercury’s voice and not Malek’s.
“I may not have been the obvious choice,” said an emotional Malek onstage, “but I guess it worked out.” The actor famously worked hard to get into character, having prosthetic teeth made to match Mercury’s larger choppers and wearing them before the film was even greenlit. “This is about a gay man and immigrant who lived his life unapologetically as himself,” said Malek, adding that the film’s recognition is proof that audiences are “longing for stories like this.”
He went on to nod to his own roots: “I am the son of immigrants from Egypt; I am a first-generation American,” he said (Mercury was the British son of Indian immigrants). And perhaps the most head-scratching part about Malek’s speech was the music the Academy used to play him off the stage: “America,” the Puerto Rican anthem from “West Side Story,” a rather broad nod to the theme of immigration.
“Bohemian Rhapsody,” despite its wins, had been plagued by scandal via original director Bryan Singer, who was fired partway through filming and later the subject of an Atlantic story detailing decades of sexual misconduct. But despite the film’s turbulent making and some critical grumbling about its being a by-the-numbers biopic and a downplaying of Mercury’s homosexuality, viewers and voters alike seemed to agree that Malek’s performance was genuinely outstanding and an impressive far cry from his role as dispassionate hacker Elliot on “Mr. Robot.”
Malek, though he had to have been expecting the win, was nonetheless beaming with surprise and delight as he clutched the Oscar: “It is something I will treasure the rest of my life.”