NEED TO KNOW
Rami Malek says he is often mistaken for Bruno Mars — much to the disappointment of some of the “Uptown Funk” singer’s fans.
During a special live taping of the Happy Sad Confused podcast — in celebration of the 10th anniversary of the Mr. Robot series — the actor was asked by host Josh Horowitz if he has ever been mistaken for another celebrity.
“I’ll get Oscar Isaac. I get Bruno Mars,” Malek, 44, said at the taping at New York Comic Con on Thursday, Oct. 9.
His fellow podcast guest and Mr. Robot costar Christian Slater then chimed in, “Are you serious?”
Malek replied: “Yeah, that’s a thing. We met, and [Mars] goes, ‘Oh, my doppelgänger.’ This is a thing.”
Getty(2)
The Bohemian Rhapsody star then proceeded to share a funny story about how he once made a young girl cry over his mistaken identity.
“I was at a Dodgers baseball game, and this sweet little girl came up to me and said, ‘Can I have your autograph?’ And I said, ‘Sure,’ ” he recalled.
“And she showed me a picture of Bruno Mars, and I said, ‘Oh, I’m sorry, I’m not him,’ ” he continued. “She took a beat and then she wept. I took her picture and I signed it Bruno.”
Slater, 56, also shared a story about being mistaken for another actor.
“Yesterday, I was waiting for my daughter to come home on the bus from school, and this guy [went], ‘Oh, hey, Kevin!’ I get Kevin Bacon,” he said as the crowd laughed.
Jason Mendez/Getty
Malek and Slater shared the screen in the USA drama Mr. Robot for four seasons from 2015 to 2019. The show followed brilliant but unstable cybersecurity engineer and hacker Elliot Alderson (Malek), who is recruited by a man known as “Mr. Robot” (played by Slater) to join a mysterious group of hackers to take down a global corporation.
Malek won a Primetime Emmy for his role, and Slater won a Golden Globe.
During the podcast conversation, Malek opened up about stepping into the shoes of such a complex character as Elliot and how it sometimes required rigorous “mental gymnastics.”
“I think there was a sense of gravity to that character from the very beginning. I mean the immense grief, profound alienation. He’s dealing with just a sense of loss. Someone who is an addict and someone who’s a nonconformist and doesn’t really know how to communicate with people, but still there’s a steely determination inside of him, and I always was able to tap into that,” he said. “There was this unique resilience that I found in Elliot day in and day out that always imbued me with some sense of hope about humanity.”
Never miss a story — sign up for PEOPLE’s free daily newsletter to stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer, from celebrity news to compelling human interest stories.
Malek explained that he felt “a sense of duty” to work hard to “nurture that human being, to side with [Elliot] at times and to argue with him at times.”
“So it was a lot of mental gymnastics day in and day out. And I’m not going to lie — the schedule and and [show creator] Sam [Esmail] put me through absolute hell, but it was a challenge that I embraced and look back on with great pride,” he added.
