(applause)
- Incredible.
Before I fall down.
(applause)
- Thank you.
Thank you.
Please. - Press conference.
- You are the custodian of this.
All of you, Queen, thank you.
- [Reporter] Hi everybody, congratulations.
And I was wondering
why was it important for you to tell this story
in this format?
- Wow. - Wow.
- That's a great question. - It's a loaded question.
- Would you like it?
- Go ahead.
No, no, no, Brain.
Go ahead, go ahead.
- It's probably fair to say we were reluctant, actually, to
approach this format.
Roger and myself, you know,
but we had this feeling that if we didn't do it
and we didn't do it with the right people
then it would get done wrong by somebody
and it wouldn't do Freddie justice.
So we really, in the interest of,
of portraying Freddie as he deserves to be portrayed
we got into it.
And if it hadn't been for the fact that we found
the right people at the right time
then we wouldn't be standing here.
And number on is Graham King here.
(applause)
- [Reporter] Yeah, this is for Graham.
- Yes.
- [Reporter] Congratulations, I know you've been at this
for a long time.
I have to ask out of the benefit of hindsight,
how big of a hurdle was Bryan Singer's departure
and do you share the award with him?
- Not something I really should talk about tonight.
- It's a good question, though.
(laughter)
You know?
Yeah, I'll follow Brian's lead.
- Next question.
- [Reporter] So you didn't feel,
you didn't feel compelled to talk about him on stage,
you didn't feel like it was appropriate.
- We wanted to--
I will take this one.
There's only one thing we needed to do
and that was to celebrate Freddie Mercury in this film.
He is
a marvel.
There is only one Freddie Mercury
and nothing was going to compromise us
giving him the love,
celebration, and adulation he deserves.
- I'm just going to add that
every single person that worked on this film
collaborated and did it out of the passion
of making this story.
That was everybody.
Thank you.
- Yeah.
- [Angela] Angela Bishop from Network 10 Australia.
Brian, if I could ask you,
the critics weren't universally,
you know,
forthcoming with their praise,
sort of I would actually say.
And all of them seem to be trying to tell you
how they thought the movie should've been made
and how the story should be told.
(voice drowned out by laughter)
with the box office doing right,
is there anything you'd like to say.
(laughter)
- Oh, I'd love to say.
- We could say we told you so, I suppose.
I think
(laughs)
I think, to be honest, the mistake that some
of the critics made was to review the trailer,
review the teases instead of waiting to review the film
and then they would've seen the truth.
So they jumped to a couple of conclusions
and I think when people do stake their claim on something,
it's hard for them to withdraw.
Couple of them actually have rather graciously said,
"Actually, we were wrong
"and the film does the thing properly."
But you know, there's a million films you can make
about any one person.
We made this one film about Freddie.
We believe it's the right one.
And the public is,
most of them are crying.
Which is amazing, you know.
Everybody says,
"We cried, we cried and we had to go back.
"We cried again."
So that tells me we did it right.
Or the team did it right.
We didn't do it right, the team did it right.
- Yeah, I'd like to add something there,
which is
as I'm sure you've realized,
Queen have had a history of some of the worst press
any major band in the world.
And it's referred to
in the movie.
Our musical in London opened to some of the worst reviews
in the West End and ran for 14, 16 years.
And this movie is being accepted by the public
and I believe the public is the great arbiter.
And the one important thing is that Freddie believed that
as well.
And I'm sure that he's with us in terms of
how we did this film.
We did a film for people
to enjoy,
to laugh, to cry, and to celebrate.
- [Reporter] You did.
If I could squeeze in a quick question for you,
Mike Myers, would you mind?
- Sure.
Talk into this thing?
- [Reporter] Yes, please.
- Oh, fantastic.
- [Reporter] It's an old fashioned thing,
it transmits sound all over the world.
- One day I will figure that out.
- [Reporter] Your connection to,
specifically, the song Bohemian Rhapsody
in Wayne's World through this film,
can you talk to me a little bit about that journey
and how close you feel to this gang?
- I'm...
This
experience of
Queen, for me personally, is a continuing
series of minds being blown.
You know, in the suburbs of Toronto,
I was listening to Bohemian Rhapsody
and then I had a chance to make a movie,
it was Wayne's World and I said I want it to be
Bohemian Rhapsody.
There was a little resistance to it
and I said
ultimately, I don't want to make the movie if it isn't
Bohemian Rhapsody.
Put me in a time machine,
get the call, would you want to be in a movie
about Bohemian Rhapsody and...
These are gods that walk as men
and I can't believe I'm here, so, you know.
And Rami is just fantastic and
Graham is...
So this whole experience is...
And just, people coming up to you and just saying
how much it made them
cry and
how much it just celebrates these geniuses.
So I'm just thrilled to be part of it.
- [Gina] Hi, Gina Wolfe for Rami.
You know, you have talked about the whole process
of you becoming Freddie.
I wonder how much Freddie
changed you?
Because
you seem
more open, more joyous, more...
Talk to me about how he infected you.
(laughs)
- Well very powerfully.
I think that the misconception
with me may be that I,
I play a very
profoundly alienated human being with
major social anxiety on Mr. Robot.
I'm not necessarily that human being.
I relate to that human being
and there are aspects of Freddie Mercury
that I relate to.
You can look at this man and see him step on stage
with these incredible individuals and together
form this
super human rock god icon status.
He steps out there with a cape
and a crown
and he is a deity.
He is a god.
And there is a part of him, I think, that
as he could hold an audience in the palm of his hand,
at some moments,
just wanted to be held that way as well.
So I tried to find the humanity in him,
I related to
the nature of him being an immigrant,
struggling to discover his identity,
and so powerfully taking everything that he was
discovering, this complication, this chaos,
this turmoil,
and this beauty inside of him and throw it out there
and lift himself and everybody else up to be
everything they know they could be.
And in
looking at that,
he lifted me up to be everything I could be
on this film.