Rami Malek Details LAPD Racial Profiling Incident: “A Very Precarious Situation”

Oscar winner Rami Malek revealed a previous encounter with the Los Angeles Police Department during which he was racially profiled and thrown onto a cop car as authorities tried to locate a robber.

The actor, who detailed the incident in a lengthy cover story with The Guardian, was discussing issues of identity and othering he had faced, from being profiled as a Middle Eastern man at the airport to being “what’s called ‘white passing’” with “very distinctive features” and thus not fitting in as a child while growing up in ’90s Los Angeles.

Recounting another instance of stereotyping, the Mr. Robot star recalled a seemingly harrowing situation at the hands of the police.

“I got thrown on the bonnet of an LAPD cop car because someone had robbed a liquor store and stolen a woman’s bag,” Malek said. “They said the [thief] was of Latin descent and, ‘You fit the description.’ I remember how hot that engine was, they must have been racing over there and it was almost burning my hands.”

He continued, “My friend, who was Caucasian, was clever enough to go, ‘Actually, sir, he’s Egyptian. Not Latin.’ I remember laughing on the cop car, thinking, ‘OK, this is a very precarious situation. I may well be going to jail for something I’ve not done.’”

Further details, including when the incident took place and what happened in the aftermath, were not included in The Guardian piece.

Malek, who garnered a Best Actor Academy Award for his turn as Freddie Mercury in the 2018 blockbuster biopic Bohemian Rhapsody, will soon take to London’s Old Vic theatre stage as Oedipus and appear in The Amateur, a tense thriller in which he stars as a CIA decoder who goes rogue in order to avenge his wife’s murder. The 20th Century Studios pic, also starring Laurence Fishburne, Rachel Brosnahan and Jon Bernthal, is bowing in theaters April 11.