Freddie Mercury’s purported daughter has claimed that the late Queen singer would have been “appalled” by the 2018 biopic Bohemian Rhapsody. The woman, whose existence was only revealed publicly earlier this year by biographer Lesley-Ann Jones, criticised Rami Malek’s portrayal of her father, saying it lacked the joy and smiles that defined him. She also expressed concern over how Freddie’s AIDS diagnosis was represented, suggesting factual errors regarding the timeline.
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The woman told The Sun newspaper: “Freddie would have been appalled by the movie. It would have made his hair stand on end. This film presents a version of him so far removed from the truth.” She further claimed that Freddie would have insisted on having creative input and might even have blocked the film had he known it would misrepresent him.
She alleges that she is the product of an affair between Freddie and a close friend’s partner in 1976, and said she only came forward to correct what she described as “a movie that is full of fabrication”. According to her, Freddie entrusted her with 17 personal journals dating back to 1976, which she had promised to keep private. She also criticised “the Queen machine” for exploiting her father after his death.
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Freddie’s long-time friend, Mary Austin, responded sceptically to the claims, calling it “astonishing” to believe that Mercury could have fathered a secret daughter without her knowledge. The alleged daughter said she was “devastated” by Austin’s reaction and insisted that the truth of her father’s life has been “distorted, twisted and rewritten” over the decades. She maintained that, despite the controversy, her goal was simply to correct the public record.
