Rami Malek Once Made a Little Girl Cry After He Told Her He Wasn’t Bruno Mars

Rami Malek Once Made a Little Girl Cry After He Told Her He Wasn’t Bruno Mars

Rami Malek knows he shares a lane with Bruno Mars , at least in the eyes of some fans. And one mix-up at a Dodgers game ended in tears.

Comic Con conversation about celebrity lookalikes

The 44-year-old Oscar winner lit up New York Comic Con on Thursday, Oct. 9, during a special live taping of the Happy Sad Confused podcast celebrating the 10th anniversary of Mr. Robot. When host Josh Horowitz asked if he’s ever been mistaken for another celebrity, Malek didn’t hesitate.

“I’ll get Oscar Isaac. I get Bruno Mars,” he said, prompting a stunned, “Are you serious?” from his Mr. Robot co-star and fellow guest Christian Slater.

Malek doubled down. “Yeah, that’s a thing. We met, and [Mars] goes, ‘Oh, my doppelgänger.’ This is a thing.”

The Dodgers game mix up

Then came the crowd-pleasing story that turned heart-warming and heart-breaking all at once. “I was at a Dodgers baseball game, and this sweet little girl came up to me and said, ‘Can I have your autograph?’ And I said, ‘Sure,’” Malek recalled. “And she showed me a picture of Bruno Mars, and I said, ‘Oh, I’m sorry, I’m not him.’ She took a beat and then she wept. I took her picture and I signed it Bruno.”

Christian Slater shares his own mix up

Slater, 56, had his own mistaken-identity moment to toss into the mix. “Yesterday, I was waiting for my daughter to come home on the bus from school, and this guy [went], ‘Oh, hey, Kevin!’ I get Kevin Bacon,” he said, sending the room into laughter.

Mr. Robot collaboration and accolades

Malek and Slater shared the screen for four seasons on USA’s Mr. Robot (2015–2019), the buzzy drama about brilliant but unstable cybersecurity engineer and hacker Elliot Alderson (Malek), who’s recruited by the enigmatic “Mr. Robot” (Slater) to help take down a global corporation. The series netted Malek a Primetime Emmy and Slater a Golden Globe.

Reflecting on the role and its demands

The weight of Elliot Alderson

Reflecting on the role that put him on the awards map, Malek opened up about the mental gymnastics required to play Elliot. “I think there was a sense of gravity to that character from the very beginning. I mean the immense grief, profound alienation. He’s dealing with just a sense of loss. Someone who is an addict and someone who’s a nonconformist and doesn’t really know how to communicate with people, but still there’s a steely determination inside of him, and I always was able to tap into that,” he said. “There was this unique resilience that I found in Elliot day in and day out that always imbued me with some sense of hope about humanity.”

Duty to the character and production challenges

Malek added that he felt “a sense of duty” to do right by Elliot. “To work hard to nurture that human being, to side with [Elliot] at times and to argue with him at times,” he said. “So it was a lot of mental gymnastics day in and day out. And I’m not going to lie , the schedule and and [show creator] Sam [Esmail] put me through absolute hell, but it was a challenge that I embraced and look back on with great pride.”