Mary Austin has opened up on how Freddie Mercury wanted to keep his roots a secret.
Freddie Mercury used to “stay out of the sun” to hide his Indian roots.
The late Queen icon, who died in November 1991, was born in Zanzibar to Indian parents, and his former lover and best friend Mary Austin has explained how he would try to keep it a secret.
She told The Guardian newspaper: “He hid that well.”
Asked if Mercury was “passing as white English”, she replied: “Yes. He’d stay out of the sun because his skin would darken, and he didn’t want that.
“With Freddie, you just saw what he wanted you to see.
“He’d get stopped in the street by police and they said, where are you from, and when he said Bombay they arrested him, because they thought he was taking the proverbial.”
The 75-year-old former shop assistant admitted the Bohemian Rhapsody hitmaker would “never” speak Indian languages in front of her.
She added: “His parents would speak Gujarati, but he spoke English back.”
Mary also opened up on her first impressions meeting Mercury, having initially been friends with Brian May.
She recalled: “I thought he was too confident for me… He was full of bravado.”
She found his confidence “intimidating”, but the reality was a deliberate attempt to “protect” his true self.
Mary added: “It was a mix of real confidence and bravado. I think the mix was to cover and protect who he really was.”
Meanwhile, Mary also recalled having her suspicions about his sexuality, before he came out to her.
She said: “We were walking down Kensington High Street one day, maybe a month after we met, and he pointed to an ex-girlfriend across the road and said, ‘Ah, that’s my ex-girlfriend, she’s bisexual.’
“And by the time he’d looked back for me, I’d gone. I just thought, mmm, I don’t know what that is, but it’s not for me.”
She insisted she was “intimidated” by the situation, and he “apologised later”.
She pondered: “I don’t know [why]. I said, I think this is maybe not for me… Retrospectively, I can say he could have been on a fishing trip.”
Mary wondered if Mercury was testing to see if she was also bisexual, but she had no interest in exploring in that way.
She added: “I didn’t want a menage a trois. I’m heterosexual. I don’t stretch that far, you know.”
Freddie Mercury ‘stayed out of the sun’ to hide Indian roots
