“Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy?” asks the opening lyric of the song that gives Bohemian Rhapsody its name, and the movie has a bit of both. With the only remaining members of Queen acting as executive producers on the Freddie Mercury biopic (bassist John Deacon retired following Mercury's death in 1991), the filmmakers have access to the full library of Queen's songs and to the band's memories. But with cooperation there is always the danger of smoothing the rough edges, and the movie, based on a screenplay by Anthony McCarten, does a bit of that, too. Below, we break down what's the truth and what's artistic license.
Young Freddie aka Farrokh Bulsara (Rami Malek)
As in the movie, Freddie Mercury was born Farrokh Bulsara and remains the only known rock star of Parsi descent. As one character explains, Parsis trace their ancestry to members of the Zoroastrian religion who fled Persia to India to escape persecution more than a millennium ago. However, Mercury was actually born in what was then the British protectorate of Zanzibar in present-day Tanzania. He lived there and in India before he, his parents, and his younger sister moved to England when he was a teenager. The movie alludes to all of this only briefly and begins with Mercury in England.
