Rami Malek won the Best Actor Oscar for his role as Freddie Mercury in Queen biopic Bohemian Rhapsody and also caught the attention of the award show's medics after tumbling off the stage with excitement.
When he won this coveted award, he gave his co-star and girlfriend Lucy Boynton lots of kisses, he ran up the stage and spoke highly of Queen, his crew, his cast, and his family.
He also said, most importantly ‘As an immigrant ‘I am the son of immigrants from Egypt, I’m a first generation American and part of my story is being written right now…’ Then, to Lucy, who blushed from the audience, he said ‘you are the heart of this film, you are beyond immensely talented, you have captured my heart, thank you so much’.
He then, and this is not quite on camera, fell off the stage so hard that he dropped his Oscar and a medic needed to be drafted in.
And while it’s hardly noticeable that his bowtie wasn’t on straight, at this point it turns out everyone, from Lady Gaga to hired staff at the Oscars, had had a go at trying to keep it from twisting around, and yet, by the time he was on stage, it was still at a jaunty angle.
The clumsiness was hardly due to any lubrication, though, as Rami saved that for later at the Governor's Ball, treating the entire event like a horny 14-year-old boy might treat a big Formula 1 race win, and soaking everyone in sight. Once all the fizz had shot out of the big, phallic bottle, he declared ‘and that’s what happens when you win an Oscar’ - although, we might add, fellow acting Oscar winners Olivia Colman, Regina King and Mahershala Ali (who doesn’t drink), did nothing of the sort!
Far from adorkable, Rami’s behaviour is being seen, by some quarters, as part of a wider douchebaggery. Almost as if his clumsiness is not just physical, but in his muck-ups made by his well-intentioned words. First, international activist group Act Up!, which has been fighting for people with Aids to have access to medication for decades, called Rami out for not once mentioning, in all his many award acceptance speeches, the stigma-ridden disease Freddie Mercury died of.
Second, there is still a lot of ire directed at Rami, and, to be fair, all of his colleagues on Bohemian Rhapsody, for not being more vocal about the sexual assault allegations made against the film’s original director Bryan Singer. Rumours have been swirling for years about the X Men director, but, following a seismic article detailing several allegations - which Singer denies - he was dropped from the BAFTAs nominations. Yet not, it seems, the Oscars, in which Singer was still technically nominated for in the best film category, but did not attend.
Coupled with the fact Bohemian Rhapsody has been panned by critics across the board (though clearly not the Academy who vote on the awards) for a bunch of reasons, well, many were hoping Rami's star would take a tumble last night, perhaps not so literally, though.