Rami Malek tried to film a video with a fan - he instantly became a meme

Rami Malek's celebrity status has been a bit rocky since the release of the Freddie Mercury biopic Bohemian Rhapsody.

Not only did the film receive mostly negative reviews, but Malek was also caught up in an awkward moment when he fumbled what should have been a relatively straightforward answer to whether Mercury was a gay icon.

Now he has unwittingly become a meme thanks to a rather bizarre interaction with a fan, who was hoping that he could give a video shout out to a few of her friends.

The 37-year-old actor wasn't a big fan of that idea but was happy to take a selfie. Except it didn't quite work out like that, and the result wasn't exactly what the fan, going by the Twitter name of xan, would have been hoping for.

That's quite strange behaviour from a big star, but we can't begrudge someone wanting a little bit of privacy, even if it doesn't shine the most positive light on Malek.

Things became more surreal when xan revealed that Malek actually scrolled through the options on her phone to make sure she wasn't recording a video.

The video was only shared on Twitter a few hours ago and has already been viewed more than 700,000 times and retweeted more than 6,000 times.

Most people are divided on how they feel that Malek should have reacted to the request.

Then the memes started to arrive and let's just say that Twitter had a field day.

Others tried to defend Malek.

The majority of people had a lot of empathy for xan, who admired her for not completely collapsing under a sea of embarrassment when he said 'no'.

More: Everyone’s confused over this selfie, for good reason​