Rami Malek struggled while snorting fake morphine in Mr. Robot, so had to wear a contraption to help him.
The 35-year-old actor stars as cybersecurity engineer Elliot Alderson in the show, who is recruited by Christian Slater’s anarchist character Mr. Robot to join a group of hacktivists.
Elliot suffers from clinical depression and has an addiction to the drug morphine, which he is frequently seen snorting in almost every episode. Rami admits the scenes quickly began to take their toll, so he asked producers to come up with a way that he wouldn’t have to actually snort anything.
“I mean, most of the time it’s just a vitamin B pill or something but yeah, doing take after take of snorting… I end up blowing it out,” Rami explained during an interview on Late Night with Seth Meyers on Tuesday (19Jul16).
“But after a while I said, ‘Look this is just killing me, can we do something about it?’ So they built me this vacuum that goes down my sleeve, and through this utensil that I (gesticulates having it in his hand and snorting).”
When Rami was given the device he had some fun with producers by pretending to snort giant lines, adding: “They didn’t know (about the vacuum) so they’d be looking at me like, ‘Dude, what’s wrong with this guy?’”
In the show Rami’s character lives in an apartment in Chinatown in New York, with the cast filming in an actual apartment in the area. But since Mr. Robot has become such a hit, the actor reveals the people who own the building have given it something of a makeover.
“They hated us shooting there but I think they finally figured out they have their stoop on a hit TV show,” he laughed. “So it was pretty rundown and when we went to shoot there the other day it’s totally redecorated. I mean, for as much as you can redecorate a stoop in Chinatown. There’s a dumpling shop next door, their prices have gone up from a dollar to two dollars a dumpling.”
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