The show must go on.

Sacha Baron Cohen has told Howard Stern why he quit the Freddie Mercury biopic he had been working on for six years.

“Not one person is going to a movie where the lead character dies from AIDS and then you carry on to see how the band carries on,” he said yesterday (March 8).

Cohen explained it came down to artistic differences and that he had hoped for a grittier, more honest portrayal than what the remaining members of Queen wanted: “There are amazing stories about Freddie Mercury, the guy was wild, he was living an extreme lifestyle. There were stories of little people with plates of cocaine on their heads walking around parties.”

In 2013, Cohen parted from the project, with Brian May explaining that “in the end, we felt that his presence in the movie would be very distracting.”

During his conversation with Stern, Cohen called May an “amazing musician” but “not a great movie producer.”

Sacha Baron Cohen got into some beef with Liam Gallagher last week when he revealed the Oasis frontman once threatened to stab him in the eye.