"There's something not sitting quite right" - When Rami Malek opened up about his interesting journey of self-discovery

By Ankita

Modified Apr 15, 2025 07:55 GMT

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Rami Malek's star has been on the rise since he made his breakthrough in Sam Esmail's 2015 thriller series, Mr. Robot. In 2018, he was cast as legendary musician Freddie Mercury in the biographical drama Bohemian Rhapsody. His performance in the film earned him several accolades, including the Academy Award for Best Actor.

On January 17, 2019, in an interview with Backstage, Rami Malek reflected on his journey of self-discovery as an actor. The interviewer asked him about it, noting how he had once been typecast in similar roles early in his career. Malek said:

"There's always something that I always feel kind of off about when I'm passing these audition halls, and you're going out for something that you know, somehow deep inside, there's something not sitting quite right about it."

Malek, whose parents are Egyptian immigrants, further said that he realized that doing such roles was not a service to his heritage. So, he told his agent that he would not be doing any such roles further.

In an interview with CBS News on April 6, 2025, Malek reiterated this, saying:

"There were roles, because of my heritage, playing a terrorist, and that was something I thought, I can't – I'll be pigeonholed. And that's not the way I want to represent my culture."

When the interviewer pointed out that the last time he played such a role was in a TV show called 24, Malek said:

"Yeah, I think that was the last one. I said, 'Enough is enough' there."

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Rami Malek on why he agreed to play a character like the one in Mr. Robot again

Rami Malek has made a return to the big screen with The Amateur after portraying American nuclear physicist, David Hill, in Christopher Nolan's 2023 blockbuster, Oppenheimer.

In The Amateur, Malek appears as Charlie, a CIA cryptographer whom the authority underestimates when he demands that they search for his missing wife.

In Sam Esmail's Mr. Robot, he had played the role of a cybersecurity engineer and hacker.

Both of these roles are of characters that have to be in front of a keyboard. In an interview with The New York Times, published on April 11, 2025, Malek was asked what inspired to play such a character again. He replied:

"If it’s a guy behind a computer screen or who feels overlooked by society or who’s disenfranchised and alienated, those characters just speak to me. I find them profoundly human."

He further said:

"So from the perspective of playing a quote-unquote 'action hero,' hwhat better way to access humanity and reality than through someone who goes through life as so many across the world actually do?"

Rami Malek also revealed that there is a tagline for the film, which he brought to the marketing team. It is about how Charlie is underestimated, which Malek believes is something a lot of people relate to in the real world.

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The Amateur is now in theaters.