Actor Ben Hardy says he lied about his drumming skills to play former Queen band member Roger Taylor in the upcoming movie Bohemian Rhapsody.
He said he had reached out to director Bryan Singer after learning that his X-Men: Apocalypse filmmaker was taking charge of the new biopic.
“He had reservations based upon the fact that he wanted the person who played Roger Taylor to be able to play the drums, because you can cheat the other instruments with camera angles, but in the wide shots you can see if the drum is out of sync,” Hardy said.
He added: “So I told him I could play the drums — which I could not at the time. I wanted the job really bad. Who does not want to play a rock ‘n’ roll star? So I told him a little white lie/big lie, that I could play the drums. So he was like, ‘Great, can you put this song on film for me to show to the producers?’”
Hardy flew into “a massive panic” and quickly hired a music teacher to put him through a drumming crash course, playing for 10 hours a day to perfect the new talent.
“There was not enough time — I bought the cheapest drum kit I could find and found a drum teacher locally and was like, ‘Look, here’s the deal: I need to learn to play this song as soon as possible, what can you do?’”
Hardy recalled Singer chasing him up for the video recording.
“I was like, ‘Here is the moment, going to have to do it.’ So I put it on film and just prayed,” he said.
His intense training paid off, and he was added to the line-up of Bohemian Rhapsody, which stars Rami Malek as Queen frontman Freddie Mercury.
