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"Brian May explained this weekend why Sacha Barron Cohen is no longer set to play&amp;#xA0;Freddie Mercury&amp;#xA0;in the biopic of the late Queen singer. &amp;quot;In the end, we felt that his presence in the movie would be very distracting,&amp;quot; the guitarist&amp;#xA0;told Ultimate Classic Rock.\r\nThe news came out in July that&amp;#xA0;Baron Cohen was dropping out&amp;#xA0;of the project, which he had been slated to appear in since 2010, over creative differences.&amp;#xA0;Deadline reported&amp;#xA0;at the time that the surviving members of Queen, who have script and director approval on the project, envisioned a family-friendly PG movie, while Baron Cohen &amp;quot;was counting on a gritty R-rated tell-all.&amp;quot; But May said this weekend that the real reason was that Baron Cohen&amp;apos;s personality was just too big for the part.\r\nFreddie Mercury: His Life in Pictures&amp;#xA0;&amp;quot;What led us to that conclusion was the last three movies that he&amp;#x2019;s made &amp;#x2013;&amp;#xA0;The Dictator,&amp;#xA0;Les Miserables&amp;#xA0;and&amp;#xA0;Hugo&amp;#xA0;&amp;#x2013; in which he makes outstanding performances, but they&amp;#x2019;re very much Sacha Baron Cohen performances,&amp;quot; May said. &amp;quot;And we thought there has to be no distraction in the Freddie movie. You have to really suspend that disbelief &amp;#x2013; the man who plays Freddie, you have to really believe is Freddie. And we didn&amp;#x2019;t that could really happen with Sacha.&amp;quot;\r\nMay insists that the band and the actor parted ways on very good terms. &amp;quot;It&amp;#x2019;s a shame that there were these sensationalist stories about him walking out. None of that was true,&amp;quot; he said, also noting that it was hard to talk about the split, &amp;quot;because we owe Sacha a lot. He had so much enthusiasm for the project and it really helped us kick it into the start position.&amp;quot;\r\nMay said they are close to finding a replacement for Cohen, but wouldn&amp;apos;t name any names. According to&amp;#xA0;Contact Music, drummer Roger Taylor let it slip on BBC1&amp;apos;s&amp;#xA0;The One Show&amp;#xA0;Friday night that they were interested in&amp;#xA0;Skyfall&amp;#xA0;actor Ben Whishaw. Whishaw fortunately has some prior experience channeling rock stars in his work, having played Keith Richards in the 2005 film&amp;#xA0;Stoned."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/brian-may-reveals-why-sacha-baron-cohen-left-freddie-mercury-biopic-20131020>