Rami Malek shares fond Robin Williams memory from Night at the Museum

Patrick Gallagher, Robin Williams, Ben Stiller, and Rami Malek in Night at the Museum
(Image credit: 20th Century Fox)

Robin Williams may have passed away almost seven years ago, but his former co-stars still have fond memories to share of their time working together – including Rami Malek, who worked with Williams on Shawn Levy's Night at the Museum franchise.

The first Night at the Museum movie was Malek's first role in a feature film after a series of small roles in TV shows – he played Egyptian pharaoh Ahkmenrah and went on to star in the movie's two sequels. The third installment, Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb, was largely set in the British Museum in London, and this location was special to his co-star Williams.

Malek shared the touching anecdote in a recent interview with Jimmy Fallon on The Tonight Show. "On the third one we’re shooting at the British Museum at night and we have the place all to ourselves and Robin, you could tell something was happening with him, right? He would go on these riffs every once in a while and light up the world and you’d be like, Oh my god! Who are you? and then dip back down into this other place, he’d see us all on our phones and devices and he’d be like, What happened to this? What happened to this?" Malek reminisced.

"And so I see him kind of veer off and he walks off alone and he’s just kind of staring at this massive rock in the British Museum and I’m like, Aw man, like, what’s going on with him, is he alright? So I walk up to kind of like, say Is everything okay? And he looks at me, just kind of slightly over the shoulder and he goes: 'How often do you get to be alone with the Rosetta Stone?'”

Malek has since moved onto bigger franchises – we can next see him onscreen as supervillain Safin in the upcoming Bond movie, No Time to Die (unless it gets delayed again…).

Entertainment Writer

I’m an Entertainment Writer here at GamesRadar+, covering everything film and TV-related across the Total Film and SFX sections. I help bring you all the latest news and also the occasional feature too. I’ve previously written for publications like HuffPost and i-D after getting my NCTJ Diploma in Multimedia Journalism.