Riz Ahmed is chasing acceptance in 'Bait'

Summary

Fresh Air (NPR) — Riz Ahmed is Chasing Acceptance in ‘Bait’

Date: March 23, 2026
Host: Tonya Mosley
Guest: Riz Ahmed

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Episode Overview

In this episode, Tonya Mosley interviews Riz Ahmed about his new Prime Video series, Bait—a genre-blending show that follows a British Pakistani actor auditioning to be James Bond, and the wild unraveling that ensues. The conversation moves fluidly among themes of belonging, representation, ambition, and the messy intersection of public and private identity, with references to Riz’s acting and musical career, as well as his new film adaptation of Hamlet.

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Key Topics & Insights

1. Setup of ‘Bait’: Chasing Acceptance and Performing Identity

• Premise: A struggling British Pakistani actor lands an audition for James Bond; the resulting scrutiny reveals deeper questions about identity and belonging.

  • “He’s in a chase sequence, except he’s not chasing a villain, he’s chasing acceptance.” (Tonya, 00:24)

• Opening scene: Shah (Ahmed’s character) nails Bond’s persona, then forgets his lines—setting off a spiral of insecurity and pressure.

  [Clip: Audition Scene]

  • “You knew it. You knew it. What’s wrong with you? … You’re a failure. You should be ashamed of yourself. (Riz Ahmed as Shah, 04:09)

Inner Critic and Universality

• Riz describes the inner critic as a universal voice, not just for actors but for everyone stuck “performing” versions of themselves.
  • “So much of the show is taken from my own experience... I feel like that’s something that’s very, very relatable. Outside of auditioning or being an actor or anything like that, we’re often our own worst critics.” (Riz Ahmed, 06:08)

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2. Bond as a Symbol and Representation

• Bond represents “the ultimate symbol of success”—commanding, desirable, unflappable. For Shah (and Riz), Bond stands as both an aspiration and a challenge to authenticity.

  • “James Bond is a very important symbol because he is the ultimate symbol of success… But actually, the gap between that public self and the messy vulnerability of our private selves is often huge, you know?” (Riz Ahmed, 08:13)

• The show reflects on the cost of chasing external validation, especially for someone from a minority background.

  • “In chasing this symbol, is he abandoning himself? Is he abandoning where he's from? Is he abandoning his family? Has he forgotten actually who he really is?” (Riz Ahmed, 08:47)

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3. Origins, Real-Life Inspiration & Meta Humor

• Riz started scribbling ideas in 2014, inspired by the paradoxes in his own life—moments where his public and private selves collided.

  • Story of being lauded for Star Wars at the same time as being banned from a supermarket for suspected shoplifting (09:45-12:18).
    • “At one point, I go, dude, I’m not shoplifting. I’m Star Wars, man.” (Riz Ahmed, 11:15)

• The show intentionally blurs the line between fact and fiction, with real experiences feeding the narrative’s humor and poignancy.

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4. Representation, Tokenism, and Personal Relationships

• Bait explores complex questions around representation, ambition, and what it means to be “enough.”

  • Scene highlighted: Shah’s ex accuses him of wanting to play “a white character”:
    • “He wouldn’t be white. You would be.” (Ex-girlfriend character, 12:58)

• Riz resists tidy answers, emphasizing the show’s goal of dramatizing nuance rather than didacticism:

  • “We don’t really want to come up with any answers. I have none. I really want to…explore the different sides of the representation conversation…But I think what’s really interesting actually is what’s underneath that conversation is a personal relationship.” (Riz Ahmed, 13:01)

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5. Genre-Bending and the Meaning of “Bait”

• The series incorporates spy thriller, family drama, romantic comedy, and more.

  • “If I can make something that’s a full meal, that is a romance and a spy thriller and a family drama and but overall a comedy, then I could solve a very personal problem, which is me and my wife squabbling over what we’re gonna watch.” (Riz Ahmed, 15:51)

• The word “bait” captures the show’s multilayered identity:

  • British slang: in-your-face, attention-seeking.
  • Online slang: trolling, provoking.
  • In Urdu: loyalty or allegiance.
  • In Arabic & Hebrew: home.
  • Spy reference: the lure in a trap.
  • “In retrospect, we realize, like, oh, my God, we accidentally stumbled on the perfect title…It is all those flavors and the word 'bait' means all those things.” (Riz Ahmed, 16:49)

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6. Special Guest: Sir Patrick Stewart

• Stewart appears in an unexpected role, adding gravitas and generosity to the production.
  • “Your art can kind of only be as big as your heart is.” (Riz Ahmed, 18:54)
  • “84 to step into this story. I remember having to explain, you know, various kinds of British slang and Urdu swear words to him…He was just such a pro and such a gentleman and I, I really cherish that experience.” (Riz Ahmed, 19:27)

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7. Hamlet: Reimagining a Classic

• Riz discusses his adaptation of Hamlet set in South Asian London, inspired by both his own teenage alienation and the universality of the play.

  • His teacher’s intervention: “He brought me Hamlet and said, you know, this thing, this story, this character…have a read of it, you might recognize yourself in this character. And I did, like millions of people have, right? Hamlet…feels like an outsider.” (Riz Ahmed, 22:36)

• How South Asian and immigrant experiences reflect Hamlet’s themes (family, spiritual belief, tradition).

Adapting for a Modern Audience

• The adaptation process involved making the play feel urgent and real:
  • “How do you not make this feel just like a Shakespeare performance and a poetry recital? … We need a director who…can render poetry in a very raw way and give us raw action in a very poetic way.” (Riz Ahmed, 25:27)

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8. The Soliloquy Reinterpreted: ‘To Be or Not to Be’

• Riz’s take: not about suicide, but about resistance.

  • “It’s about fighting back against oppression, even if you know you will lose everything…It’s actually a very, very radical speech.” (Riz Ahmed, 28:57)

• Becoming a father during the filming process brought new insight into Hamlet’s exhaustion and vulnerability.

  • “This is exactly how Hamlet feels. … This guy is not sleeping. He needs to sleep. He hasn’t slept. He’s unraveling from that as well.” (Riz Ahmed, 30:40)

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9. Hip-Hop, Verse, and Shakespeare

• Riz draws a direct line from Shakespeare’s language to rap:

  • “What you’re supposed to do is receive an electric charge of rhythm and melody and musicality, just like rap music…So I wish people spoke about Shakespeare in that way because to me it is much more like music than it is like, you know, an English class.” (Riz Ahmed, 33:11)

• His experience on the rap battle circuit and formal Shakespeare training fused to inform his creative voice.

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10. Music, Satire, and Post-9/11 Experience

• Early satire: Post 9/11 Blues (“kind of deliberately silly…a satire, really”), using humor to process the violence and paranoia of the moment.

  • “Comedy is really my first love, you know. So I decided to kind of write this satirical rap song.” (Riz Ahmed, 39:41)

• The banning of that song by UK radio only fueled his resolve.

  • “Let me tell you, the best thing you can do to an artist who's trying to start out and get some attention for their work is ban their work.” (Riz Ahmed, 40:45)

• The Long Goodbye: Uses romance metaphors for immigration, belonging, and exile, rooted in Urdu and Sufi poetic tradition.

  • “What I want to do as a rapper is I don’t want to just be someone who’s kind of like taken from this incredible African American tradition. I want to also contribute something of my own tradition and my own heritage.” (Riz Ahmed, 44:55)

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Memorable Quotes & Moments

• On the universal chase for acceptance:
  • “Life sometimes feels like one big audition. We all feel like we have to perform this version of ourselves…The gap between that public self and the messy vulnerability of our private selves is often huge.” (Riz Ahmed, 06:40)
• On personal contradictions:
  • “That week…I got banned from my local supermarket for suspected shoplifting…At one point I go, dude, I’m not shoplifting. I’m Star Wars, man.” (Riz Ahmed, 10:02–11:15)
• On the meaning of ‘Bait’:
  • “Only in retrospect we realize…we accidentally stumbled on the perfect title for this that actually communicates the entire layer cake of this show.” (Riz Ahmed, 16:49)
• On Shakespeare and rap:
  • “To me [Shakespeare] is much more like music than it is like, you know, an English class.” (Riz Ahmed, 33:11)
• On art and heart (re: Patrick Stewart):
  • “Your art can kind of only be as big as your heart is.” (Riz Ahmed, 18:54)

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Notable Segments & Timestamps

• Opening & Show Setup: (00:15–03:43)
• Audition scene & the inner critic: (04:09–06:17)
• On performing one’s public self: (06:40–08:02)
• James Bond as aspiration symbol: (08:13)
• Real-life stories fueling 'Bait': (09:45–12:18)
• Representation debate with ex-girlfriend scene: (13:01)
• Meaning(s) of 'Bait': (16:30–18:39)
• Sir Patrick Stewart’s impact: (18:54–19:27)
• Encountering Shakespeare and Hamlet: (22:36)
• Adapting Hamlet for a modern audience: (25:27–27:13)
• Reinterpreting 'To be or not to be': (28:57–30:18)
• Shakespeare’s language as music/rap: (33:11–34:42)
• Pirate radio, early music influences: (37:22–39:36)
• Post 9/11 Blues and censorship: (39:41–41:11)
• The Long Goodbye, Urdu/South Asian poetic tradition: (44:55)

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Conclusion

This episode dives deep into the creative mind and experience of Riz Ahmed, illuminating the real-life struggles, aspirations, and nuanced observations that infuse both Bait and his adaptation of Hamlet. With humor, candor, and a drive to complicate easy narratives about identity and representation, Riz’s work offers new ways to think about home, ambition, and the performances we give both onstage and off.

Transcript

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[Tonya Mosley]

This is Fresh Air. I'm Tonya Moseley. A struggling British Pakistani actor lands the audition of a lifetime as James Bond. Word gets out and the Internet goes wild. And suddenly his life starts to resemble the very character he's auditioning to play. He's in a chase sequence, except he's not chasing a villain, he's chasing acceptance. That's the setup for Bait, a new prime video series that is part spy thriller, part family comedy, part psychological unraveling, and entirely unlike anything else on television right now. My guest Riz Ahmed wrote, created it, produced it, and stars as the lead character, Shah Lateef. Fate opens with Shah in a tuxedo doing a James Bond screen test. He's debonair, commanding, in control, James Bond personified. And then he forgets his lines.

[Riz Ahmed]

Tell me, when it's just you all alone, how do you live with yourself? Do you even know who you are? Line. Sorry, sorry, sorry. Help. It's all good. It's all good.

[Tonya Mosley]

It's just we're on a bit of a schedule.

[Riz Ahmed]

Yeah, that's why I was thinking quick reset, back towards our nail at this time. How are you blowing this audition? I know the speech.

[Tonya Mosley]

I know it.

[Riz Ahmed]

My car, you up every time at the exact same moment. What is this, a prank show wearing a hidden camera? That's funny. No, I. I just have a very particular process. I've got my head around it now. I'm ready. Sorry, guys, we just. We have to. Yeah, well, just a minute. Sorry. How was your weekend? It's good, thanks. How was yours?

[Carvana Announcer]

Great.

[Riz Ahmed]

Yeah? What did you do? Just. Yeah, thanks. Thanks, Jim. My second. But I just. Stop it. Sorry.

[Tonya Mosley]

You know what?

[Riz Ahmed]

They didn't want to see you. I had to convince them, so this is on me. I've got a confession to make. I'm light headed from fasting. It's the holy Muslim month. It's called Ramadan. This involves no eating and drinking in the day. I'm light headed from a bit of a cultural understanding. Well, I've just seen you drink Alpu.

[Tonya Mosley]

Six takes in a row. I tried.

[Riz Ahmed]

Just a shame you didn't.

[Tonya Mosley]

This moment is the beginning of a wild ride as we watch this character unravel. And Riz has said, embedded in this show is a hunger to belong and what it costs someone when they finally get close to the thing that they've been chasing their whole lives. Riz is an Emmy Award winning and Oscar nominated actor who is known for many roles, including the Night of an Actress, an HBO crime drama in which he plays a college student whose life shatters after being accused of murder. In Sound of Metal, he played a punk drummer grappling with sudden hearing loss. And in the Long Goodbye, he's part of a British Pakistani family whose ordinary Sunday is shattered by a far right militia. Riz Ahmed earned an Oscar for best live action short film this spring. His adaptation of Shakespeare's Hamlet opens in theaters. And Riz, welcome back to FRESH air.

[Riz Ahmed]

Thank you so much for having me back.

[Tonya Mosley]

Well, after that failed screen test that we just heard, in that clip, your character Shah goes to the dressing room and then he goes over the monologue he forgot during the audition, and then he starts berating himself in the mirror for failing that test. I actually want to play that. And then I want to ask you something on the other side of it. Let's listen.

[Riz Ahmed]

You knew it. You knew it. What's wrong with you? Do you know who you are? I'll tell you who you are. You're a failure. You should be ashamed of yourself. You are ashamed of yourself because you're ashamed of your family. Nobody, nothing. Um, come in. Um, I forgot to grab your mic.

[Tonya Mosley]

Oh, that is so agonizing. A crew member comes and says they probably heard the whole thing.

[Riz Ahmed]

Yep.

[Tonya Mosley]

You know, I mean, I love that scene, Riz, because that internal chaos, you know, it can become a whole thing. It's never just an audition when you're a brown actor, is it?

[Riz Ahmed]

Yeah. I mean, so much of the show is taken from my own experience. You know, I'm that guy who you were mentioning the night of. I remember waking up in the middle of the night two years after I wrapped on the Night of and going to the mirror and redoing scenes that the whole world had already seen. I'd already been handed awards for this performance. I'm like, nah, I got it. I got. I gotta get it right. And the inner critic is such a kind of big part of this. And, you know, honestly, like, yes, the show is drawn from those experiences, but it's not about being an actor. It's about, as you said, being caught up in a chase sequence where you're chasing acceptance and running away from your own inner critic. And so we felt early on in the show you needed to see just how mean Shah's inner voice can be about him. And I just Wanted to be kind of, like, vulnerable and open about that. I mean, I've definitely, you know, I've done exactly that. Like, I said, go into the mirror, redoing the scenes, saying, you're useless, you're crap, you don't know what you're doing. And I feel like that's something that is very, very relatable. Outside of auditioning or being an actor or anything like that, we're often our own worst critics.

[Tonya Mosley]

Yes. You know, I know a lot of people will be watching this series and thinking, is Riz playing himself playing a character? And so much of this you. Well, all of it you wrote. So it comes from real experience as well as your imagination. But what did Bond in particular represent to you as a British Pakistani kid growing up in London?

[Riz Ahmed]

Yeah. Well, I want to deal with the first part of what you said first, which is. Is Riz playing a character, playing himself? And if you don't mind, I want to say something that you said to me just before we started recording the interview. I said, look, how did you like the show? And you said, I feel like I am Shah. You said that, Tanya, you said, I feel like, damn, I'm that person, if you don't mind me saying. So many people have been saying that, and yes, there's a lot of me and Shah, but I think actually there's a lot of Shah in all of us, more than, like, to admit. And. And really, the. The show is about this feeling that life sometimes feels like one big audition. You know, we all feel like we have to perform this version of ourselves that knows the script, that, as you said, is commanding and decisive and desirable. The best public version of ourselves, we're performing that. But actually, the gap between that public self and the messy vulnerability of our private selves is often huge, you know, and that's true whether you're talking about how your life is actually going versus the Instagram post you just got up put up or that you saw of someone else, or like, how professional and put together you're seeming on a zoom call when actually you're not wearing any pants, you know, just out of the frame. And so there's this. Just to answer your question, like, I feel like I'm playing. I'm trying to draw in a feeling that is personal to me, but I think is personal to a lot of people.

[Tonya Mosley]

And then that extra component, though, of playing the man, James Bond, like, he is considered the ultimate, you know, in every way.

[Riz Ahmed]

Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you know, the show isn't really about James Bond. But James Bond is a very important symbol because he is the ultimate symbol of success. Yes, sure, as an actor, he is, you know, the pinnacle of cinematic achievement. And yet it's also just, you know, for any of us. He's this archetype of, like. Like I said, decisiveness, desirability, of being in control, being unflappable, of being invulnerable. And so I wanted the character of James Bond to serve as this symbol of aspiration, this unattainable kind of self that Shaw is. Is hunting down almost. And in chasing this. This symbol, is he abandoning himself? Is he abandoning where he's from? Is he abandoning his family? Has he forgotten actually who he really is? And so the show is trying to deal with that. And I think that that's something that, you know, we. We all kind of go through, where we're often pulled between the people we were and the people we want to be. And actually, the healthy equilibrium is probably somewhere in the middle. You know, probably that thing you want to be is like an attempt to escape yourself. And that thing you were is maybe, you know, a version of yourself you need to evolve out of. But we often feel pulled between those two polarities.

[Tonya Mosley]

How long did it take for you to work on this concept, this idea, and come to what is a genre bending series?

[Riz Ahmed]

Oh, man. I started kind of scribbling down ideas for this show in 2014, and I started doing that because, as I said, the gap between my public and private self started becoming so big and so stressful. They actually started feeling kind of hilarious. If I give you an example.

[Tonya Mosley]

Oh, really?

[Riz Ahmed]

Yeah, yeah. Like the week that it got revealed that, you know, okay, I'm in new Star wars, and they released it, a. Released a cast photograph of us all on set. That same week. I got banned from my local supermarket for suspected shoplifting because my washing machine had broken. Only clean clothes I had were flip flops, bright pink swim shorts, a bright green puffer jacket, and a tank top. I'm dragging a massive bag of dirty clothes around to the laundromat. I remember it's my brother's birthday. I haven't got him a cake. I go to Tesco's. I'm trying to get him cake. They got no cake. I buy a frozen pizza with birthday candles. I'm at checkout. It seems like an insane thing. I'm buying anyway. It's like, yeah, birthday candles and pizza. I'm dressed insanely. I've got this massive laundry bag, and I forgot to beep it properly on the checkout and another pizza and it goes off and security like, yeah, this, you look. This person looks kind of shady. And we get into a back and forth and I'm so frustrated. At one point I go, dude, I'm not shoplifting. I'm Star wars, man. And they go, okay, this person's definitely crazy. And you're banned. You're never coming back here. And that's just an example about like the messy chaos of who we really are versus the image of success that's somewhere out there publicly. And again, that's not just true for an actor. That's true of everyone who's posting their best selfie on Instagram, you know, So I started jotting down these little stories to try and just process them and make sense to them. I knew there was something in these contradictions and juxtapositions that was about me making sense of my own experience, but also that just felt kind of universal if I could just get a handle on it. And so I spent many years jotting down these, these ideas. And then it was when I met my co showrunner, Ben Carlin. We put the writers room together and all this kind of stuff. We realized actually the perfect symbol for this show is James Bond. And that was partly also because my name had been mentioned in relation to James Bond casting in some articles and stuff over the years. So in the meta kind of spirit of this show, where we're trying to be as meta as possible and have fun with that, I thought, actually that's a perfect symbol. You know, that's a perfect symbol of. For a character who wants to be anything other than himself, who would he want to be? He'd want to be James Bond.

[Tonya Mosley]

There are so many good one liners in this show that have to come from real life. And so hearing that story about you inside of the convenience store and saying, I'm Star wars, there's actually a scene with your ex girlfriend, who she's a writer, she's a columnist. She puts this scathing piece out about Shah, and in one scene she says, like point blank, someone is talking to the two of you. And she says, he wants to play a white character. To which shy, your character pushes back with, he's not white if he's me. To which she responds, he wouldn't be white. You would be. And oof. You know, what were you doing in that exchange? With that exchange?

[Riz Ahmed]

Yeah, well, you know, we don't really want to come up with any answers. I have none. You know, I really want to kind of like Explore the different sides of the representation conversation in that moment. Really, you know, I think it's an important conversation. I also think it has its limits. I also think it's been weaponized and turned into an economy in some ways and a competitive race, you know, representation, merchantry, and. And I think it also can sometimes be a distraction from real systemic change. You know, the tokenism of window dressing can hide like bigger, bigger issues that lie beneath sometimes. So I think there's an interesting kind of back and forth that they have there. There's really kind of getting into some of that nitty gritty, but again, without answers. Just trying to kind of put it all out there. But I think what's really interesting actually is what's underneath that conversation is a personal relationship about, you know, that they're. They. This is a conversation to my character Shah and his ex Yasmin, played by the amazing Ritu Arya from Umbrella Academy and polite society. And really what's going on there underneath the kind of socio political think piece jousting is two ex lovers who are trying to jab at each other and push and pull and look for validation and get one up on each other because they're hurt, because they both feel like the other has left them behind in some way. And what was really important to me more than anything is that this show didn't exist in a conceptual space. It's about characters, it's about relationships. You know, everyone has the one that got away. And I was like, well, what if Sean and the one that got away have their whole entire episode together?

[Tonya Mosley]

Yeah, it sort of flips the series for one episode to be kind of a romantic comedy.

[Riz Ahmed]

Yeah, we try and flip the series the whole time. And you know, there's a spy thriller episode, there's a romantic comedy, there's a kind of surreal episode. There's one that's almost like the Bond gala, you know, like James Bond turns up at the kind of, you know, black tie event and hijinks ensues. You know, we've got that, we've got all these different flavors and we've got an EID episode as well. You know, I felt like got Christmas episodes, Thanksgiving episodes, I want to have an EID episode. And so we very deliberately trying to layer in and thread multiple different genres because honestly, I feel like my life takes place in different genres. I feel like right now I'm here, you know, lucky me, you know, pretending to be all clever, talking, talking to you guys on Fresh Air and I'm going to walk outside and Slip on a banana peel and like fall flat on my face and suddenly I'm in a slapstick, you know? And it's like we wanted to have that multiplicity, that tonal whiplash, because honestly, that's just what I enjoy. And I felt like if I can make something that's a full meal, that is a romance and a spy thriller and a family drama and but overall a comedy, then I could also just solve a very personal problem, which is me and my wife squabbling over what we're gonna watch. You know, let's get in there and try and do it all.

[Tonya Mosley]

I marvel at the multi nature of this series. As I'm watching it, I'm just thinking, how did he pitch this? You know, how does one pitch something like this and get it greenlit? Because it's so well done, but it also can't really be explained in one line, you know.

[Riz Ahmed]

Oh, thank you. That means the world to me. You know, it's interesting you say it can't be explained in one line because throughout the whole process we struggled with that. Right. And then when we got to the very end of the process, we actually found a way of summing up the whole show in one word. And that word is bait.

[Tonya Mosley]

Yes. And what does that mean?

[Riz Ahmed]

Yes, I want to unpack it for a minute. Right. So bait is a British slang word which means being blatant and in your face and attention seeking. There we go. That's what my character is doing. For much of the series, bait is an online term about trolling or provoking people online. That's a big part of our show as well. That element. Bait in Urdu means your loyalty or your allegiance. And that is something that Shah is contending with. Home versus ambition, east versus West. Bait in Arabic and Hebrew means home. And so much of this show is a love letter to home. And it's about family and how far do you travel from home in order to please home or help home, you know, and then of course, there's a big spy thriller element to our show, and bait is something that's used as part of a trap. And so it's that. So it's a weird thing where only in retrospect we realize, like, oh, my God, we accidentally stumbled on the perfect title for this that actually communicates the entire layer cake of this show. It is all those flavors and the word bait means all those things that's

[Tonya Mosley]

remarkable that you stumbled upon, like knowing those meanings outside of the traditional meaning of bait. That wasn't when you all said, oh, yeah, let's come up with bait. Did you have all of those before you?

[Riz Ahmed]

No, no. Do you know what I had. I often have to explain what the word bait means to American collaborators because I say it all the time. Often I'll come up with an idea, you know, we're spitballing in the writers room and I'll go, what about this? And I go, oh, actually that's too bait. That's a bit bait, man. I don't want it to be as bait as that. And they go, what do you mean? And I was like, oh, bait means like too blatant, it's not subtle enough. And of course that's British slang because the most important thing you have to be as a Brit is understated and subtle and, you know, reserved. And so bait is a kind of derogatory kind of slang term.

[Tonya Mosley]

Sir Patrick Stewart, best known as Captain Picard in Star Trek, he appears in bait in a role that I will not spoil, except to say that it's not what you'd expect. And I wonder what does his presence do in the story that no one else could?

[Riz Ahmed]

First of all, it elevates the story just by the fact that it's Patrick Stewart in the story. I mean, he's such a hero, you know, I don't want to, I don't want to say too much about the role he plays because it is very particular and I don't want to give anything away. I guess I'll just say that working with him showed me that your art can kind of only be as big as your heart is. You know, if that doesn't sound too corny, like you kind of have to have a capacity for such receptivity, humility, generosity, an empathy in order to kind of be an artist of that stature and at that level, you know, just the hum. Yeah, just the kindness, the openness. 84 to step into this story. I remember having to explain, you know, various kinds of British slang and Urdu swear words to him. You know, it's nothing but just always engaged, always interested, always, always. Shall we do it again? Yeah. He was, he was just such a pro and such a gentleman and I, I really cherish that experience.

[Tonya Mosley]

Our guest today is award winning actor, Riz Ahmed. We'll be right back after a short break. I'm Tanya Mosley and this is Fresh Air.

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[Tonya Mosley]

Hi, this is Molly Sivi Nesper, digital producer at Fresh Air.

[Riz Ahmed]

And this is Terry Gross, host of the show.

[Tonya Mosley]

One of the things I do is write the weekly newsletter and I'm a newsletter fan.

[Riz Ahmed]

I read it every Saturday after breakfast. The newsletter includes all the week shows, staff recommendations and Molly picks timely highlights from the archive. It's a fun read.

[Tonya Mosley]

It's also the only place where we tell you what's coming up next week and it's so [e-mail] fresh air and

[Riz Ahmed]

look for an email from Molly every Saturday morning.

[Tonya Mosley]

Riz, let's talk a little bit about Shakespeare because it wasn't really your thing as a kid until a teacher I hear introduced you to Hamlet. What do you remember about that first encounter with the play and what did it kind of unlock for you?

[Riz Ahmed]

Yeah, it's really interesting. I, like many people felt like Shakespeare is the epitome of everything I'm on the outside of. It doesn't belong to me. It's stuffy, it's elitist and I got a government assisted place to a private school where I felt like an outsider for many different reasons and I was lucky enough to have an English teacher called Mr. Roseblade who was a white Jewish middle aged man from a different place in the uk, Thought we had nothing in common, but he spoke fluent Punjabi and he brought me Hamlet and said, you Know, this thing, this story, this character, it's at the heart of the establishment that you feel so alienated from in many ways. But have a read of it, you might recognize yourself in this character. And I, and I did, like millions of people have, right? Hamlet being a character who feels out of place. Hamlet himself feels like an outsider. He feels like he doesn't belong, like no one understands. And it really spoke to me as a teenager. But more than that, what I realized was, hang on a minute. This Hamlet story set in medieval Denmark actually is exactly like growing up in Wembley. This is about who you can and can't marry. This is about everyone squabbling over the family business. This is about the reality and lived experience of spirituality, ghosts and spirit possession, which is par for the course. It's, you know, it's, it's, it's part of our lived experience culturally. And this is also actually kind of pivots on a story point of marrying one's sister in law if your brother dies, which is a cultural tradition. I think it's actually a Jewish tradition and an ancient Hindu and South Asian tradition. I've actually grown up with people who've had to do that if their brother has died tragically. They themselves are unmarried with the consent obviously of their sister in law and of the conversation that they have. They go, should we get married? It's a way of protecting the orphans and protecting the widow. So this didn't feel like this antiquated, kind of slightly out of touch piece to me. I was like, if you put it in my community, in my experience, this is, right now, this is completely vivid and completely urgent. And it was then, at the age of 17, that I very precociously had the idea that, man, I want to, I want to make a movie of this one day and I want to, and I want to set it in that place. And in doing so, I hope to kind of render this story more vividly in a more urgent, modern way than maybe I've seen it and just make it feel real, because all those things are so real in that environment.

[Tonya Mosley]

What did you have to kind of work through to get to this adaptation? Because you could have just played Hamlet and put on a movie adaptation of, of Hamlet as it is, you know,

[Riz Ahmed]

I really believe that the amount of time it took was kind of quite divinely guided in a way. That's because I feel that this is the moment for this story. You know, it's a story. Hamlet is a story. And it's a character who is grieving the Illusion that the world was ever a fair place. And I think that's how we're all feeling now. We're all grieving and reeling from this realization that, okay, I knew the world was unfair, but now the shameless, brazen unfairness of it is just kind of laid bare. And it's about grieving that illusion, and it's also about feeling powerless in the face of how unfair it is. And it's actually feeling kind of complicit in it and gaslit about it. And that's what the play is about. And I think that this is when it was meant to be told. But for us creatively, the part that we were struggling to unlock is, how do you not make this feel just like a Shakespeare performance and a poetry recital? How do you not make this feel like a kind of self congratulatory, like actor wants to take on the classic? And actually, we. That was the opposite of how we wanted to feel. And it really took us meeting Anil Karia, the director. It was after I collaborated with him on the short film the Long Goodbye, for which he won an Oscar, that I was like, oh, I think we know how to do this. We need a. We need a director who's worked a lot in rap music videos. We need a director who has actually can render poetry in a very raw way and give us raw action in a very poetic way. And that's what he did in that short film, and that's what he does in his films. And we connected and we had a long conversation about how this has to feel like music.

[Tonya Mosley]

You know, there's the classic line from Hamlet. To be or not to be. That is the question. And in your version, Hamlet delivers this famous soliloquy, basically speeding through the rain at 100 miles an hour. And I want to play a little bit of it. Let's listen.

[Riz Ahmed]

To be or not to be, that is the question. Whether it's nobler in a mind to suffer with slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or to take arms against the sea of troubles, but by opposing end them. To die, to sleep, no more. Poor by sleep to say we end the heartache. A thousand natural shocks, the flesh is there to consummation devoutly to be wished, to die, to sleep, A chance to dream. There's the rub.

[Tonya Mosley]

That is my guest, Riz Ahmed and his latest film adaptation of Hamlet. And Riz, you've talked about this before, but for most of us, we're kind of taught that this speech is about suicide. Basically, Hamlet is weighing whether life is Worth living. And you came to believe something entirely different is happening in those lines. What do you think Hamlet is actually asking?

[Riz Ahmed]

Yeah, I don't think it's about suicide at all. It's about fighting back against oppression, even if you know you will lose everything, possibly even your life. It's actually, it's very clear in black and white in the text. The active verb here is. Is about taking. It's about to take up arms. You know, what he's saying is there's two choices. You can carry on being. And it's very interesting. It says, be, not living, just be. You can exist and you can exist and just suffer all the oppression and all the unfairness and all the injustice of the world and all the insults that life throws at you. Or you can fight back. But fighting back might mean you will not no longer be. So it's really about whether we are willing to pay, pay, pay the price of true resistance, you know, and. And it's actually a very, very radical speech. It's very confronting. It's tackling a taboo subject, really. You know, the idea of taking up arms and resisting oppression and the powers that be. It's a dangerous idea, actually. It can get you arrested. You discuss that openly to this day.

[Tonya Mosley]

You and your director, Anil Karia, you all became new fathers while making this film or were new fathers while making this film, Is that right?

[Riz Ahmed]

That's correct, yeah. Yeah. And that ended up being a big part of the process, actually.

[Tonya Mosley]

Yeah. How so how did becoming a father kind of change what you thought this play was actually about or brought or the process itself?

[Riz Ahmed]

Well, I guess it struck me that this is a play in part about fatherhood and about the absent father. And I didn't fully understand that until I self. Until I myself became a father, you know, until I became actually an absent father in the sense that I was away for much of the day, you know, awake before my kid was awake, home after my kid gone to sleep. And I started to understand that emotionally, but actually it was more the effect it had on me physically because, you know, I'm waiting to. I want to play this role. It means so much to me, this story. Like 15 years of developing the script. I want to getting ready for these soliloquies. And what would happen is me and Anil would turn up on set on like two hours sleep, one hour's sleep, like 45 minutes sleep.

[Tonya Mosley]

Because your baby was a newborn. Yeah.

[Riz Ahmed]

And the baby was a newborn. Exactly. And his child was sleep regressing. And what I realized after First I was just like, well, this is all just gonna be a total failure now. And then I realized that, hang on a minute. This is exactly how Hamlet feels. The word that is repeated most frequently in to be or not to be is the word sleep. This guy is not sleeping. He needs to sleep. He hasn't slept. He's unraveling from that as well. And it actually infused a kind of very raw, kind of quite vulnerable, quite frazzled kind of texture, I think, to the. To my performance that I could never have planned or controlled. You know, I think you can kind of feel a lot of that exhausted kind of disarray in the performance. And. And honestly, that's the version of Hamlet I'm interested in is not the version who is the smartest guy in the room spouting commanding poetry. The version of Hamlet I'm interested in is the most stressed, vulnerable, and under pressure guy in the room who continues to speak because the words are failing him. He can't find the right words.

[Tonya Mosley]

I mean, Shakespeare was a wordsmith. He's working in verse and rhythm. And I'm thinking about your background in rap and your politically charged album, and I'm wondering, did that hip hop instinct shape at all how you heard and delivered these lines?

[Riz Ahmed]

Yeah, very, very much so. Very much so. Here's my take on it. A lot of people find a block with Shakespeare because they find it difficult to understand what the words mean. I totally get it. I often feel the same way. Here's the thing. People in Shakespeare's day themselves did not speak like that. They didn't say that Shakespeare made up like between three and five thousand new words. I think there's some estimates. The word eyeball is a word that he made up. Imagine hearing that for the first time. A wobble, an eye, what. He made that up. And one thing that he played with all the time was rhythm, rhythm, rhythm, rhythm, rhythm. And so in the same way that when I listen to some of my favorite rappers new songs, I don't know what they say the first time around, but I am totally rapped. I'm totally leaning in. I'm engaged. I feel it emotionally. It's the same way. Your first experience of this thing is supposed to be like music. You didn't catch all of the words, but that word there felt weird enough to make you sit up. And what you're supposed to do is receive an electric charge of rhythm and melody and musicality, just like rap music. But that's not the actual experience of these plays. So I wish people more people spoke about Shakespeare in that way because to me it is much more like music than it is like, you know, an English class.

[Tonya Mosley]

Did you come to this understanding as that 17 year old whose teacher introduced you? Did you see that connection because you were kind of deep in rap at that moment, that time? Yeah, it's such a, such an interesting connection to make.

[Riz Ahmed]

You know, I think it's an inevitable one to make, really. You know, if you're interested in poetry, if you're interested in lyricism, if you're interested in rhythm, like Shakespeare's doing, that he's playing in all those arenas. And so it was clear to me very early on. But something that isn't also lost on me is at the same time I was studying under Rob Clare and doing a master's in classical acting, which is essentially just a masters in just in Shakespeare performance. That's when I started on the rap battle circuit in London and things like Jump off and Battle Scars and Bombay Bronx and, you know, competing in all these championships. And so it did somehow in my mind feel like it's one thing.

[Tonya Mosley]

If you're just joining us, my guest is actor, writer, musician and producer Riz Ahmed. More after a break. This is FRESH AIR.

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[Tonya Mosley]

As you've mentioned, Riz, you grew up in Wembley in northwest London, the son of Pakistani parents who immigrated in the 1970s. Take me back to when you were A teenage Riz. And you were DJing and rapping. You started on pirate radio. How did you discover pirate radio?

[Riz Ahmed]

So I grew up in the, you know, in the mid-90s in the UK. I grew up in Wembley. Wembley is both, you know, the site of England's greatest triumph in the 1966 World cup and also, you know, in the shadow of those of that stadium. I'd go every Sunday to Wembley Market, which is where you'd buy, you know, buy the Chinese spring roll and the immigran kind of food stalls and the fake designer clothes that we'd buy and sell over there, you know, amongst that kind of working class and immigrant community. And pirate radio station culture was just. That was just everywhere, you know. Yes, you'd have, you know, the BBC radio stations and the other London stations, but in between all those airwaves, the one that's all the FM frequencies that were not spoken for, you'd hear a faint crackle and then the voice of MCs on microphones that were broadcasting from the roofs of housing projects locally. And that's pirate radio culture. So it was there that I was kind of exposed more and more to drum and bass and garage, particularly when I was too young to actually go to the raves themselves. As soon as I was old enough to kind of try and hack off whatever faint facial hair I had and try and, like, grow it back thicker, you know, I was at the raves themselves and. And I just love the music. I love the specificity of London's musical subculture. And the uk, I think, does that so well, you know, because of the Clash and the mix of different cultures and different sounds and influences. So, yeah, I was exposed to it and then I started doing it myself, both at raves and on pirate radio. And I remember when I went to Oxford and I got in there, I felt like I'd lost something. I'd lost this thing that I loved. And so I was eager to kind of keep it going. And that's when I started, you know, promoting my own club nights. And it became a really invaluable place where every week, without fail, I could hone my craft, I could try out new lyrics, I could gain confidence as a performer. And I think it helped me, not just as an emcee, but as an actor.

[Tonya Mosley]

How. How old were you when you recorded the song? Post 911 blues.

[Riz Ahmed]

So opposed 911 blues, my first rap track. It's kind of deliberately Silly Balls. So deliberately, you know, it's a satire, really. It's a provocative kind of satire. And it takes the shape of an almost like a nursery rhyme or school kids jingle. I wrote that when I was 23, I think 22. You know, I just felt like I was surrounded by this circus of fear mongering and of paranoia and mistrust and the war on terror and being a Young Muslim post 9 11, I was like, this is just crazy. Like, how do I make sense of this? And comedy is really my first love, you know. So I decided to kind of write this satirical rap song.

[Tonya Mosley]

It got banned from the British airwaves.

[Riz Ahmed]

It did kind of like unofficially, there was a sense amongst radio DJs that they cannot play it because it's too politically sensitive.

[Tonya Mosley]

And what was your response to that? And did it kind of feel a little powerful? I mean, that, that mean that meant your words had power.

[Riz Ahmed]

Let me tell you, the best thing you can do to an artist who's trying to start out and get some attention for their work is ban their work. This is in the era of MySpace that the song very quickly went very viral and it gave me a little confidence and excitement about how maybe I can if I say the thing that I feel but that no one else is maybe saying, that is that can really travel, you know.

[Tonya Mosley]

My guest is actor, writer and producer Riz Ahmed. He stars in the new prime video series Bait, as well as Hamlet, a modern reimagining of Shakespeare's classic set in London's South Asian community. In theaters April 10th. This is FRESH AIR.

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[Tonya Mosley]

about the Long Goodbye. It was your first studio album, released in 2020. There's a song called the Breakup, which is the first track on the album, which uses an abusive romantic relationship as a kind of extended metaphor for the relationship between the UK and immigrants. And let's listen to a little bit of it.

[Riz Ahmed]

Britain's broken up with me we had our ups but now it's broken down Let me break down the whole I was a model, had the bling and the girls grit and the pearls My cash was a quarter of the stash in the world and this stray pale chick came to trade I laid with a cane to pay she straight slithered and then stayed I couldn't kick her out she saw I was at war with myself and I'm a fool when you're at war with yourself you're easy to divide and rule she had me locked down Beat me red and blue till I knew that right was white and not brown when it make you hate yourself, you hand over your crown she moved in, I was a guest unwanted in my own house she stole my, broke my, starved me, scarred me, got paid off the same back she whipped, left me hungry, took my industry and independence from me, took my door then lent me money said that it was all to help me

[Tonya Mosley]

and she

[Riz Ahmed]

had beef with some German next man I went to war for her twice almost lost my left hand.

[Tonya Mosley]

That was the breakup from my guest today, Riz Ahmed. And there is also a short film for the Long Goodbye, which kind of serves as a music video. It won an Oscar for Best Short Live Action Film. Tell me about the decision to use language of love to talk about belonging and exile and loss.

[Riz Ahmed]

I feel that the poetic metaphor of love and relationship and longing is something that I grew up around in the tradition of Urdu poetry and then reading it and studying it a little bit more as an adult. You know, a lot of Sufi poetry. If you look at Rumi or if you look at Ghalib, or if you look at, you know, Ghazal, writing from South Asia, the Middle east, from Iran, it's often love poetry, and love is used as a metaphor and the relationship and the beloved is a metaphor for God, but it can also be used as a metaphor for other things. So I kind of feel like it's something that I wanted to borrow from that poetic tradition and in fact, the breakup has an alternative title in brackets, which is Shikwa. And shikwa means complaint. And that's because a very famous poem by Muhammad Iqbal, he has a famous poem called Shikva and then Javab e Shikva, which is complaint and response to complaint. And in that, he's actually complaining to God, saying, God, you've forsaken us as Muslims. Like, you know, we've been colonized and destroyed and wrecked and like, you know, where are you? You know, you said we should you take care of us, but you're not there. And so I wanted to kind of like, really touch on that, because what I want to do as a rapper is I don't want to just be someone who's kind of like taken from this incredible African American tradition. I want to also contribute something of my own tradition and my own heritage. And so I want to take the poetic forms, the poetic references, the musical backing of my own South Asian identity and my L identity and the sound system culture there and infuse the two. And it felt to me like a much more personal and much more emotional way to talk about political realities is, you know, through this metaphor of love.

[Tonya Mosley]

Well, Riz, this has been such a pleasure to talk with you. Thank you so much.

[Riz Ahmed]

Thank you for having me and thank you for the wonderful conversation.

[Tonya Mosley]

Riz Ahmed stars in A Reimagining of Hamlet, which opens in theaters in April, and and the new prime video series Bait. All six episodes will be available for streaming on Wednesday. To keep up with what's on the show and get highlights of our interviews, follow us on Instagram @NPRFreshAir. Fresh Air's executive producer is Sam Brigger. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham. Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Phyllis Myers, Anne Marie Baldonado, Lauren Krenzel, Teresa Madden, Monique Nazareth, Thea Chaloner, Susan Yakundi, Anna Bauman and Nico Gonzalez Whistler. Our digital media producer is Molly CV Nesper. Roberta Shorrock directs the show with Terry Gross. I'm Tanya Moseley.

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