Rami Malek Contacted Rachel Bilson After Their Instagram Drama

Rachel Bilson shares that things are good now between her and Rami Malek after a weird Instagram situation

Last month, Rachel Bilson shared with the world a kind of low-key upsetting story about a high school photo of herself and Rami Malek that the actress shared on Instagram. Malek is now an Oscar-winning actor and Bilson seemed to touch a nerve by sharing the old photo. She told the story of Malek asking her to remove the pic from her Instagram account and the world cringed with her.

So if you didn’t catch the first episode of the Rachel/Rami drama, allow me to spill the deets. Bilson opened up about the weird exchange between them on Dax Shepard’s podcast, “Armchair Expert.” The pair attended the same high school, so one day in January 2019, Bilson posted a cute throwback photo of the two of them with the caption “don’t forget the little people.” It was a few days before his Oscar win for Bohemian Rhapsody so she was joking with her past classmate about his new level of fame.

Welp.

Turns out, Malek wasn’t really feeling the nostalgic vibe and promptly DM’d her asking her to take the pic down. She shared that there were no pleasantries or kindness, just pretty much, “delete that.”

“It was straight to: ‘I would really appreciate if you take that down. I’m a really private person,'” she recounts.

Mmmk.

Bilson was understandably hurt and embarrassed at the time. “Rami was a good friend of mine,” she told Shepard. “We were [in] the same crew. We did ‘The Crucible’ together senior year, we were the leads in it together — all these things.”

Bilson said, “I removed it, and I even wrote to him a really nice message like, ‘I’m so sorry! Go get the Oscar! You’re doing amazing.’ And I never heard anything back, which is fine,” she recalls. “I was super bummed because he was so nice, and we were good friends. I’m a big fan of not taking yourself seriously, especially at that level of fame and talent. But look, he wants to be super respected. It’s his thing, so I respected it. I took it down. I was just a little bummed at how it was handled.”

After cringing our way through that sad tale, thankfully, there’s a nice ending to report. According to Bilson, Malek has since reached out and the former schoolmates have patched things up. She confirmed the news on an episode of the LadyGang podcast saying, “Rami and I have actually talked. Since that came out, he connected with me and we’re all good. He was so sweet and we’re totally fine now, and we talked about it and we’re good.”

However, the entire saga wasn’t without its emotional fallout for Bilson.

“I was so mortified though. I was having a panic attack, I had to go to therapy that day and I was like, ‘I’m having anxiety. I did not want this to resurface in this way. I feel so bad,'” she recalls. “Oh my god, Rami is going to think I’m doing this again and everything.’…. But it actually turned out to be a good thing for reasons. We were able to reconnect and make it better and everything’s great. He was so gracious and I totally understood where he was coming from and he understood me and I was just so happy we were able to squash it and move on. I get it and I totally understood. And he knew I wasn’t doing it with any ill intentions.”

Phew. Very glad to hear this has been resolved because the second-hand bummer feelings I had on her behalf were pretty strong. Kudos to her for being brave enough to share this vulnerable tidbit and glad all is well now in the Bilson-Malek universe.