BRIAN: Well we have a busy year coming up, 'cause we are doing this Freddie musical and that's now, the engine has started rolling.
LIZ: And is this the biopic, or is that ….?
BRIAN: Yes, the biopic, and it's about Freddie and, of course it has to be about us as well, and I think it's gonna be a really interesting film, you know. We've been through various alleyways, you know. We've been through all kind of thoughts as to what the film actually should be, and I think it's now very clear to us. We have a great director and we think we have a great guy playing Freddie, but we feel that we understand what our brief is now, because it's a film about Queen as a family in a sense, because there's the group like us forms organically in a sense, you know. We weren't put together from the outside. We just evolved very luckily into a unit which democratically worked, organically, was created - and the sum of its parts were greater than the parts, if you know what I mean.
But also it's very much a family, because we were all together longer than any of our relationships (laughs) outside - our marriages and stuff, and so the film is a kind of exploration of the dynamics of that kind of family and what happens, how it comes together and how what happens when it gets disrupted and out of balance and how it can regain its integrity. So it's a fascinating project really and I think the script is reflecting those thoughts. And, of course, it's about Freddie. It's about how he functioned in this environment.
LIZ: And the thing is, lots of people know 'that' Freddie, you know, the on-stage or feel they know him because that was the only bit they saw.
BRIAN: Yeah.
LIZ: But I'm sure, obviously you knew him so well, there must have been a million other facets of him?
BRIAN: Yeah. The Freddie we knew was pretty shy, really, but he had an extraordinary way of using his talents and also very good at bringing out other peoples' talents, you know, and by that I include me and Roger and John. He was... he had very generous nature, I think, and also a very far-seeing nature - very focussed, because he realised that if he got the best out of everyone around him, that would benefit everyone. So yeah - a very unusual person, Freddie.
LIZ: And I guess finding someone to represent that is equally difficult. I'm not gonna make you tell me who it is, but… (laughs)
BRIAN: Well, the rumours are out there, I know. (laughs)
LIZ: Everyone can Google it. What about someone playing you? Have you ever had anyone play you before?
BRIAN: No, not really. (laughs) That's an interesting thought. We have someone, I think, on the cards, you know I don't think, I probably can't reveal this either, but I'm excited about the guy who's at the moment the front runner for playing me. It's gonna be weird, I mean, that is very weird, and I… to be honest, that's one of the things which has stopped us doing this before, I think, you know. I don't know if we were ready for this. I remember coming up with the same thing in the musical. The musical originally, We Will Rock You, was gonna be a bio musical. It was gonna be about the history of Queen and stuff, you know, and history of Freddie, and we actually workshopped it that way, and then we just hated it. We just didn't think it felt comfortable to portray us on stage that way, so that's why We Will Rock You became about the future and kids in the future, and thank God for Ben Elton who had the vision to make it happen that way. 'Cause We Will Rock You's much much more interesting than a sort of biographic musical, I think, and it's a good story. You know, it's funny, it's satirical, but it has warmth to it, so I think when people come out from We Will Rock You they feel like they've kind of seen us and they know us in a strange way. And they feel like they've been on some kind of journey and they wanna do it again. That's why We Will Rock You's still there after 11 years.
.
