In a candid interview with The Guardian, Rami Malek shared his encounters with racial discrimination as an Egyptian-American, highlighting a specific incident where law enforcement mistakenly profiled him, resulting in him being thrown on the hood of a police car.
“I got thrown on the bonnet of an LAPD cop car because someone had robbed a liquor store and stolen a woman’s bag,” Malek explained. “They said the [thief] was of Latin descent and, ‘You fit the description.’ I remember how hot that engine was, they must have been racing over there and it was almost burning my hands.”

The acclaimed Mr. Robot actor was fortunate to have a quick-thinking companion present who could rectify the officers’ misconception about Malek’s ethnicity.
“My friend, who was Caucasian, was clever enough to go, ‘Actually, sir, he’s Egyptian. Not Latin,'” Malek recalled. “I remember laughing on the cop car, thinking, ‘OK, this is a very precarious situation. I may well be going to jail for something I’ve not done.'”
Malek expressed concern about potential increased discrimination against immigrants in America with Donald Trump‘s upcoming inauguration on Jan. 20. He referenced former President Barack Obama‘s literary works Dreams from My Father and The Audacity of Hope as continuing sources of inspiration, particularly when electoral outcomes prove disappointing.

“The idea that a man with a father from Kenya and a mother from Kansas could become president of the United States, it was one of the most hopeful moments from the story of the American dream,” Malek said. “That’s been flipped on its head. I always look at situations like this and just hope that it brings out the absolute best in us.”