Rachel Bilson has revealed that former classmate Rami Malek once asked her to take down a throwback photo she posted of them together, and she was "super bummed" about it. "The OC alum" posted the 2019 photo of the pair as teenagers in New York. Shortly after, Malek contacted her to ask that she remove it. Bilson recounted the incident on a recent episode of Dax Shepard and Monica Padman's "Armchair Expert" podcast.
"Rami was a good friend of mine," Bilson said. "We were the same crew. We did 'The Crucible' together senior year. We were the leads in it together, all these things. We kind of kept in contact a little bit."
The actress decided to share the photo of them during their senior year as Malek was gaining attention during the 2019 awards season for his performance as Freddie Mercury in "Bohemian Rhapsody." She thought it would be amusing, but Malek did not share her sentiment.
"We were super-nerdy, just the dorkiest picture of both of us," Bilson recalled. "But I throw it up 'cause it's funny, and I think it's so important to be able to make fun of yourself, and he had like a gold chain, and I'm like, 'Rami where'd you get the gold chain?' Whatever. So I'm just being funny, we were good friends."
Bilson found out about Malek's reaction from his stylist, who said the actor did not like the photo.
"She was like, 'Well, it's not a great picture of him.' Okay, I'm sorry. We were 16!" Bilson said. "It was what it was. It was right before the Oscars, and I remember ['The O.C.' creator] Josh Schwartz being like, 'You did him dirty! He's about to be nominated.' And I'm like, 'What do you mean? This was my friend; it's a funny picture.'"
Bilson removed the photo and apologized to Malek in a message via Instagram, but she did not hear back from him.
"I wrote to him a really nice message, like, 'I'm so sorry. Go get the Oscar, you're doing amazing.' And I never hear anything back," she said. "But I was super-bummed because he was always so nice and we were good friends, and I'm a big fan of not taking yourself seriously, especially at that level of fame and talent. But look, he wants to be super-respected, it's his thing, so I respected it. I took it down. I was just a little bummed at how it was handled."
Zoe Papadakis ✉
Zoe Papadakis is a Newsmax writer based in South Africa with two decades of experience specializing in media and entertainment. She has been in the news industry as a reporter, writer and editor for newspapers, magazine and websites.
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