golden globes 2019

Bryan Singer Reacts to Bohemian Rhapsody’s Globe Wins After Backstage Turmoil

The director was fired from the film in 2017 amid reports of disappearances from the set and clashes with star Rami Malek.
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By Alex Bailey/FX.

Bryan Singer is celebrating Bohemian Rhapsody’s winning night at the Golden Globes—despite the fact that he seemingly wasn’t in attendance at the awards ceremony, and wasn’t mentioned in any acceptance speeches. Singer, who was fired from the film, but is still credited as its director because of D.G.A. rules and Dexter Fletcher not wanting the directing credit, thanked the Hollywood Foreign Press on Instagram, sharing a still of himself on the set.

“What an honor. Thank you #HollywoodForeignPress,” he captioned the image.

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Singer also posted about the film’s wins for best drama and best actor (which went to Rami Malek) on his Instagram story. When the film won those categories, neither Malek nor Fletcher, who stepped in to finish Bohemian Rhapsody after Singer was fired, mentioned the film’s former director in their acceptance speeches. When asked in the show’s press room about Singer, producer Graham King reportedly replied, “That’s not something we should talk about tonight,” before Queen’s lead guitarist, Brian May, added, “Good question, though.”

“So we just..we are all still supposed to be pretending we don’t know about Bryan Singer?” actress Evan Rachel Wood later asked on Twitter. “Cause it worked out really well with #Spacey and #Weinstein.”

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Singer was fired from the Queen biopic in December 2017, when the film had just two weeks of principal photography left. His ouster came amid reports that Singer had been disappearing from the set, and that he simply did not return after its Thanksgiving break; insiders also claimed that the director was “emotionally very frail” and arrived late to work. In a statement, Singer claimed he was dealing with “pressing health matters concerning one of my parents” during production. He also denied claims that he had clashed with Malek, chalking up whatever issues they had to creative differences.

But Twentieth Century Fox did not only fire Singer—the studio also shut down the offices for his production company, Bad Hat Harry, on the Fox lot. Singer reportedly had a first-look deal with the studio. Though the trouble seemed to stem from his issues on the Bohemian Rhapsody set, the firing and the shutdown arrived around the same time Singer was accused of raping a 17-year-old boy in 2003—the allegation that Wood was most likely referring to in her tweet. Singer, through his lawyer, Andrew Brettler, vehemently denied the allegations. He also released a pre-emptive statement this past October, saying that Esquire was planning to publish a piece about the allegations against the director. The piece has not yet been published.

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