There are other hints about Mercury’s love life on A Night at the Opera. The seemingly straightforward love song “Love of My Life” is widely assumed to be about Mary Austin, the live-in girlfriend whose romantic relationship with Mercury ended soon after Opera became a worldwide hit. (This is another major plot point in Bohemian Rhapsody.) But in 2016’s Somebody to Love: The Life, Death, and Legacy of Freddie Mercury, authors Matt Richards and Mark Langthorne insist it’s actually about David Minns, Mercury’s lover at the time. (Minns is not depicted in the film.)
The truth was that, by the mid-’70s, Mercury was as confused as anyone about his sexuality. Though he’d been experimenting with men since the age of 14, he’d been in a long-term relationship with boutique owner Mary Austin since the late ’60s. According to his long-standing personal assistant, Peter Freestone, the seemingly incomprehensible lyrics of “Bohemian Rhapsody” are a thinly disguised attempt to resolve his personal situation at the time: still living with Austin, he had a regular boyfriend in music publisher David Minns, and an escalating interest in casual gay pick-ups.