Not even one of Hollywood’s most famous actors is exempt from being the protagonist of an altercation with the authorities. Rami Malek, star of ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ (2019), has revealed in The Guardian a racist episode with the police that almost led him to jail for an unpleasant misunderstanding.
In the aforementioned media, the American interpreter, of Egyptian descent, explains how some agents stopped him after receiving an alert for a robbery and under the pretext that Malek “fit” the description. “I was thrown over the hood of a police car because someone had robbed a liquor store and stolen a woman’s purse,” he explains.
The fugitive was apparently Latino and the police felt that Rami Malek resembled the details they had. “I remember how hot the engine was, they might have been running around and it almost burned my hands,” the 43-year-old actor recalls.
A friend ‘saved’ Rami Malek from the dungeon
Malek prevented the matter from escalating thanks to the intervention of a friend who was with him and who made it clear that the actor was not Latino but Egyptian. “I remember laughing on the hood of the car, thinking, ‘Okay, this is a very precarious situation. I might end up in jail for something I didn’t do,” he told The Guardian.
The actor adds that, for a long time, he continued to be the subject of numerous racist episodes because of his name and ancestry. He also claims that it was not until ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ was released that these altercations stopped. “Nowadays it may take a minute or two, but then they say, ‘Nah, it’s the guy from ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’. Let him go,” he says.