Aaron McCusker, the Northern Ireland actor, has been cast as Jim Hutton, Freddie Mercury’s Irish lover, in the biopic Bohemian Rhapsody.
The film, about the music and loves of the Queen lead singer, will explore the long-term relationship between Mercury and the Carlow-born hairdresser and landscape gardener.
The couple were together until Mercury died from Aids in November 1991. The singer died wearing a wedding ring that Hutton had given him.
Hutton, who was given £500,000 in Mercury’s will, wrote a book entitled Mercury and Me about their six-year relationship. He died in 2010 from cancer and was buried in Carlow.
McCusker, who starred in Shameless, the UK series, is from Ballymena in Co Antrim.
“We are so excited to finally be able to