Riz Ahmed: How to Silence Your Inner Critic (And Build REAL Self Worth)

Summary

On Purpose with Jay Shetty

Episode: Riz Ahmed: How to Silence Your Inner Critic (And Build REAL Self Worth)

Published: June 10, 2026
Guest: Riz Ahmed (Academy Award-winning actor, writer, producer, and artist)

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Episode Overview

Jay Shetty sits down with Riz Ahmed to explore the complicated relationship high achievers have with validation, inner criticism, and self-worth. Using Riz’s life and his new series Bait as a lens, they examine universal struggles with identity, shame, performance, and what it means to find real connection and purpose. The conversation is candid, heartfelt, and rich with practical insights for anyone grappling with people-pleasing, burnout, or the pursuit of authenticity.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Origin and Cost of the Critical Inner Voice

[01:57-06:44]

• Riz Ahmed: Opens up about his deep history with his inner critic and shame, describing it as something that “can kill you, man.”

  “I have long, deep history with this critical voice and this shame. And I really think it can kill you, man.” (Riz Ahmed, 01:57)

• Jay Shetty asks about places where Riz still feels he doesn't belong.

• Riz notes that different parts of himself feel out of place in different environments:

  “If you felt totally comfortable everywhere you went, then you're probably not in the right place.” (Riz Ahmed, 02:07)

• The theme of the episode is set: validation seeking, the dangers of over-dependence on external praise, and learning to give genuine self-love.

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2. Vulnerability, Validation, and Finding Flow

[06:44-18:07]

• Riz’s journey as an artist and human is tied to his need for validation, stemming from early childhood experiences of difference, racism, and performing for family.

  “[External validation]...if you're not giving yourself that self love, you can become completely lost.” (Riz Ahmed, 06:44)

• He shares profound memories: being threatened by skinheads at age eight (“I’m different in a way that means that I could be in danger.”), and being brought out to dance for aunties at family events (“the best feeling ever...getting to express these quite wild animal movements”).

• Jay and Riz bond over the performance expectations in their cultural upbringing and how praise/public performance shaped their self-worth.

• On the fleeting nature of achievement:

  "These fleeting moments...don't nourish you on a soul level...The thing that I'm seeking now is a sense of flow...that moment when you forget yourself." (Riz Ahmed, 02:15, revisited at 14:26 & 17:03)

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3. Life Feels Like an Audition: Code Switching, Social Media, and Shame

[21:54-30:32]

• Riz elaborates on the metaphor of life as one big audition—how modern society (especially social media) amplifies “performing a version of ourselves.”

• Jay explores the idea that the gap between public and private selves is “the amount of shame that you carry.”

  “The distance between your public and private self is the amount of shame that you carry.” (Riz Ahmed, 26:58)

• Riz describes his own “code switching,” from school uniforms to streetwear, constantly shifting personas, and how now, his work aims to unify those fragments.

• He recounts MI5 and MI6 trying to recruit him after his fame grew in the US, and how real-life moments of anxiety and vulnerability are woven into Bait.

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4. The Role of Trauma and Health in Self-Acceptance

[34:34-43:39]

• Riz shares a deeply personal story: during Star Wars filming, he developed a debilitating autoimmune condition, was hospitalized, lost significant mobility, and felt his career vanishing.

  “If I don’t even control my own body, then maybe everything I do have is a gift...when you’re brought to your knees, that’s when you're halfway towards praying.” (Riz Ahmed, 34:34, 39:16)

• The experience brought humility, gratitude (marveling at a pigeon on a hospital windowsill), and the realization that his “critical inner voice” and shame were diseases in themselves—“my body had turned on itself.”

• Jay connects with his own experience losing his voice due to polyps, learning to “chant with [his] heart,” and how loss of function can trigger deep spiritual insight.

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5. Healing Shame & Owning Vulnerability

[42:40-56:41]

• Riz reflects on how his inner critic kept him striving, but to the point of dysfunction:

  “For me...that critical inner voice led me to that hospital bed. I had to look it in the eye and say, no more shame, man.”

• The healing began in owning and integrating shame, translating it into creative work (Sound of Metal, Mogul Mowgli, Bait).

• Both Jay and Riz discuss how cultural narratives pressure us to be invulnerable, while true strength is in embracing and sharing our vulnerability.

• On why it’s often so hard to share our lowest moments:

  “I didn't want another strike against me of people thinking I was weak…” (Riz Ahmed, 55:43)

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6. The Inner Critic, High Achievement, and the Power of Play

[57:22-63:27]

• Bait personifies the critical voice as a severed pig’s head (voiced by Patrick Stewart), showing how shameful inner scripts become “part of the family.”

• Jay compares high achievers’ inner critics to athletes’ drive. Riz challenges the notion that cruelty towards self is the only motivator:

  “I don't want to believe that the inner critic is the jet fuel. I want to believe it's like one of the engines… our best performances come when we're in a state of flow.” (Riz Ahmed, 60:33)

• They praise the value of play, curiosity, and “the child” within as antidotes to relentless self-criticism.

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7. Time, Mortality, and the Meaning of Connection

[64:12-68:30]

• Jay reflects on mortality and living with intention, referencing Steve Jobs’ commencement speech.
• Both agree on the importance of living from the heart, finding people who allow them to be themselves, and measuring life less by place and more by the quality of connections.

  “I tried to belong to one person than belong to a room or a place or a space.” (Jay Shetty, 75:15)

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8. Belonging, People-Pleasing, and Authenticity

[73:05-78:24]

• Quick-fire questions reveal how Riz’s hardest mask was hiding his health crisis, and his urge to please comes out in things as simple as how he dresses for an audience.
• They discuss the chicken-and-egg of authenticity and success:

  “I think people who become most successful are the people who are most unapologetically themselves…The specificity and honesty and authenticity is what people are attracted to.” (Riz Ahmed, 78:05)

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9. Community and Personal Roots

[78:50-80:20]

• Jay and Riz pay homage to their North/Northwest London roots—Kebabish, local hangouts, and the cultural melting pot that shaped them.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “If you felt totally comfortable everywhere you went, then you're probably not in the right place.” (Riz Ahmed, 02:07)
• “The distance between your public and private self is the amount of shame that you carry.” (Riz Ahmed, 26:58)
• “When you're brought to your knees, that’s when you're halfway towards praying.” (Riz Ahmed, 39:16)
• “We don't stop playing because we get old. We get old because we stop playing.” (Jay Shetty quoting George Bernard Shaw, 62:54)
• “The child, the joy of that, the curiosity of it, not being in control—that's been a great teacher for me.” (Riz Ahmed, 62:25)

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Timestamps for Major Segments

• [01:57] Riz on his critical inner voice and shame
• [06:44] Vulnerability, validation, and performance
• [09:37] Two defining childhood memories
• [14:26] Not finding fulfillment in external successes
• [21:54] Life as an audition—how performance and social media fuel shame
• [34:34] Riz’s illness during Star Wars filming and its impact
• [42:40] Healing through authenticity—Sound of Metal and Mogul Mowgli
• [56:41] The culture of invulnerability versus owning your pain
• [60:16] The curse of the high achiever’s inner critic
• [62:54] The necessity of play and childlike wonder
• [64:12] Mortality, meaningful connection, and living with intention
• [73:05] Quick-fire Q&A on authenticity, belonging, people-pleasing
• [78:50] Shout outs to North/Northwest London, cultural roots
• [81:03] Final Five (advice, worst advice, lessons from his wife, spiritual practice, if-he-could-laws)

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The Final Five: Quick Insights

1. Best Advice:

   “Categorize yourself, not—Idris Elba said that to me. Don’t do the world’s work for them by internalizing their limitations.” (Riz Ahmed, 81:11)

2. Reality of Representation:

   • "You sometimes have to work twice as hard to get half as far, but friction gives life meaning."

3. Advice for Outsiders:

   • “The thing about you that’s different is both an obstacle and the key. Lean into the specificity of your experience.”

4. Worst Advice:

   • “Don’t do the crazy eyes.” (Casting director; Riz suppressed a natural part of his expressiveness until learning to own it.)

5. Greatest Lesson from his Wife:

   “Devotion—to her path, to our child. Devotion as a form of prayer.” (Riz Ahmed, 85:53)

6. Prayer Today:

   • For health, dignity in provision, and closeness to purpose.

7. One Law for the World:

   “Everyone off their phone at certain hours, so we can all experience time and presence differently.” (Riz Ahmed, 91:32)

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Episode Tone & Takeaways

Language & Atmosphere:

• Warm, humorous, deeply honest. Both speakers blend intellectual insight with playful self-deprecation and relatable storytelling.

Core Messages:

• External success offers fleeting comfort; real worth comes from self-acceptance and connection.
• The inner critic is universal but shouldn’t be the sole driver; flow and play are essential.
• Sharing vulnerability—especially shame and pain—liberates not just you but others.
• Joy, presence, and belonging are more about people and genuine moments than about achievement or recognition.
• Authenticity isn’t a luxury for later, it’s the true engine of connection and impact.

For Listeners:
Whether you’re a creative, a high achiever, or just navigating life's pressures, this episode provides honest, practical wisdom on navigating the tricky terrain between ambition and acceptance, performance and presence, solitude and connection.

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End of Summary

Transcript

[Jay Shetty]

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[Riz Ahmed]

I have long, deep history with this critical voice and this shame. And I really think it can kill you, man.

[Jay Shetty]

What part of you still feels like it doesn't belong?

[Riz Ahmed]

Different parts of me in every place that I go to. If you felt totally comfortable everywhere you went, then you're probably not in the right place.

[Jay Shetty]

What is Riz Ahmed's dream?

[Riz Ahmed]

External markers of achievement. The award, the round of applause. They don't nourish you on a soul level. And the thing that I'm seeking now is a sense of flow. That moment when you forget yourself.

[Jay Shetty]

Hey everyone. Welcome back to On Purpose, the place you come to become happier, healthier and more healed. Today's guest is someone I've been wanting to have in this seat for God knows how many years. I'm joined by the one, the only, Riz Ahmed. Academy Award winning actor, writer, producer, producer and artist known for Sound of Metal, Rogue One and the Night of, and for bringing deeply human stories to life. Riz is currently starring in Bait. If you haven't seen it, make sure you do A series exploring identity and the tension between who we are and how we're seen. His reimagined film Hamlet and Digger, his new film coming later this year. Please welcome to On Purpose, Riz Ahmed. Riz Ahmed, Honestly, whether it was post 911 blues, whether it was four lions, we've been with you from the start.

[Riz Ahmed]

I've been cheering you on.

[Jay Shetty]

I am a huge fan of how you put yourself out there, the conversations you have, your multidisciplinary art form. And honestly, I've been waiting for this moment, I feel like, for like God, at least, at least seven years since I launched the show.

[Riz Ahmed]

Likewise, Jay, because I'm watching you and I've just been rooting for you from the beginning. And yeah, we were just saying this before the camera started rolling. We have so many people in common in the work world, but also in the personal world because we grew up not too far away from each other in kind of overlapping worlds as well. So seeing you doing your thing, blazing a trail is just super inspiring. So likewise, man. I've been itching to get in here and.

[Jay Shetty]

Yeah.

[Riz Ahmed]

Talk to you.

[Jay Shetty]

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. I was thinking about it and I want to vouch for this because I like doing this when I've got someone on the show, when I've got a memory that stands out to me. And it was probably around five years ago, I think it was, you'd been nominated for an Oscar. We had this South Asian Oscars evening in la and you were at the party. It was probably the only time I've actually been in the room with you. It was me, you. And we were talking to Bella, Bella Bajari, who's chief content officer, Netflix, dear friend. And you said to Bella, you were like, give this guy a show, man. Like, you were like, you were vouching for me even back then. You're like, give him a show, Bella. Like, what are you doing? And I was like, this is. I was like, this is so nice. I'll take it. Like, you're the man at the moment. You're nominated for the Oscar and you're trying to get me a show. And now we've got three Shows at Netflix.

[Riz Ahmed]

Amazing.

[Jay Shetty]

You know, I was like, I feel like you planted a very important seed, and I want to give you your flowers and give you credit for that, man.

[Riz Ahmed]

For me, the reason I was rooting for you was because of not just what you have to say, because, of course, what you say is so rooted in this ancient tradition. It's how you say it. It's how approachable it is. It's how human it feels. It's how relatable it felt. Even selfishly, on a personal level, when I hear you speak, when I see the way that you're relating to people or making these things that can sometimes feel very abstract or kind of elusive ideas, esoteric ideas, and bring them into the everyday, bring them into our daily lives, it makes me feel less stupid. Do you know what I mean? It makes me like, okay, yeah, okay, yeah, all right, I can. I understand that. I get to grips with that. And. And I'm certainly one of those people who for a long time thought, what's this meditation stuff? What is this? This is kind of a bit airy. Fairy. And it actually became such a big part of my life for many years and changed my life in so many different ways. It's really because of people like you making it relatable, making it human. So, yeah, on a personal level, I was like, I need more J shape in my life.

[Jay Shetty]

So kind man. Thank you. That means the world. It's an incredible moment for you. I feel like you're everywhere in a good way. I feel like bait has just pierced through the zeitgeist and the culture. I mean, 95% on rotten tomatoes. Unbelievable. Like that. That is ridiculous to even think about and like, to see the kind of conversations it started. It's not just, oh, my God, you should watch this show. It's really good. It started conversations about identity, about shame, about mental health, about inner critic, about guilt, about all these things. And you see it wherever, wherever I go on my feed, whether it's TikTok or Instagram, either it's you or someone talking about the show. How does it feel to put yourself out there in such a vulnerable way because this story has so much of a correlation with your reality? How does it feel to put yourself out there almost not wanting validation and then to be validated for it?

[Riz Ahmed]

It's really interesting, isn't it? Because the whole show is about validation seeking and how it can lead us down a really dangerous path. It's very natural. It's very human with social animals to want that connection, want that Praise want that affirmation to be seen. But if you are purely dependent on that external validation and you're not giving yourself that self love, you can become completely lost. And that's what the show is about. And the show is really inspired by my own journey with that. You know, I've been on that journey. I continue to go on that journey. I haven't fixed it, I haven't solved the equation. It's a constant battle, you know, trying to find that self love and not just be on a treadmill looking for it from other places. So the show is about that and about trying to get past validation. So in a weird way, when people are validating the show, I'm like, this is a trap. You know, it's interesting, I was saying something like this to someone the other day, which is, I've never been great at receiving praise. Just now, when you were saying all these nice things about me, I was actually saying, okay, I'm here with Jay Shea. I'm going to open my heart, try and be present and receive. Receive the good energy, but something in me. And I'm sure you've come up against this with all kinds of people. I don't know how you deal with it yourself. Even something about receiving praise sometimes makes me feel uncomfortable. And so I'm trying to find that balance of not being desperate and hungry for it. You know, you can't live off a diet of this candy of these dopamine hits of people's praise, but also just receive it and not avoid it. I can sometimes swing between those extremes. You know, there's. On the one hand, it's googling yourself late at night, and on the other hand it's like going like, nah, nah, there's nothing rubbish. And so I'm just trying to find that healthy middle ground because the show's about that in a way.

[Jay Shetty]

Yeah, no, I. I find that powerful because I feel like it's almost like my friend said this to me the other day and I really liked it. It's this idea of like, too tight, too loose. Like sometimes you're holding yourself too tightly. Like everything matters and everything's important.

[Riz Ahmed]

Yes.

[Jay Shetty]

And then sometimes you don't hold yourself tightly at all. It's too loose and you're like, oh, nothing matters. No, it doesn't matter what anyone else says about me. And it's like, if you think about it, you're always trying to oscillate between too tight, too loose, and you're trying to find that perfect balance of like, how do I hold myself in a way I don't suffocate myself or strangle myself, but how do I hold myself in a way that I don't also just let myself go where nothing is important or valuable? And I was thinking about it because in the show we get so many of these flashbacks into Shah's childhood, his teenage years. I've seen the show, I loved it. And I have been talking about it with colleagues and friends and people who have all had interesting reflections on it, both people from South Asian backgrounds and people from completely not. And that's what I love about the show, is that it starts really fascinating dialogues beyond culture and gender and race. But one of the things that stood out, I wanted to ask you is what's a childhood memory that you have that you would say defines who you are today?

[Riz Ahmed]

When I was about eight years old, me and my brother got put up against the wall by a couple of skinheads, right? For people outside of the British context, they're kind of like, it was like a racist movement basically. Then they put a knife to my brother's throat. I remember being eight years old, looking up at, he was kind of defending me. And it was just the this kind of shocking realization that, oh, I'm different. I'm different in a way that means that I could be in danger. And feeling othered in that way made me more vigilant, made me more aware of my identity. In many ways it set me on a lifelong journey of trying to like square the circle of my identity. In some periods of time I've tried to code switch a lot. If I've gone to a predominantly white upper class school, which I did, I code switch in that way. Then I'd hang out in my neighborhood, I'd code switch another way. And I think that journey has defined me. I think that's why I started acting was kind of code switching from one social environment to another. It's a kind of performance, right? And where I'm at now and really what the show Bait is also trying to do and what it's about, it's about that search for identity. So I'm trying to bring all those different sides of me together, not edit and censor myself when I walk into a room. I did this monologue for SNL UK recently and I was working with the writers on it and it was about identity crisis. And I was like, I'm having an identity crisis. The UK is having, everyone's having an identity. We're all trying to work out who we are. And I said, look, that's why I sound like a mix between Stormzy and Rishi Sunak and just trying to embrace that and be playful about that confusion. I think that moment of realizing my difference and navigating identity was a big one. The other one's a lot more of a playful memory. Every time there was a community gathering at some point the aunties would be high on Coca Cola and Fanta and they would say, bring Golu down. Golu was my name in the community. No, Golu means roundup. Yeah, little spherical round object.

[Jay Shetty]

Don't.

[Riz Ahmed]

Apparently my brother named me Golu. I had a round head growing up. Don't ask. Bring Golu down. It's time. And I would perform and I would do Michael Jackson dancing and I would do like just ran and it. Honestly they basically I'd be smashed off Coca Cola as like a six year old, just like just freaking out, just throwing my limbs, you know, I just remember these rows of aunties just sat there clapping. Just feel like this is the best feeling ever. I'm just getting to express these quite wild animal movements. I mean it looked nothing like how dancing should look. I was just basically freak out in this really expressive way and be affirmed for it. Quite strange. But I don't know if anyone else

[Jay Shetty]

can relate to that if any other

[Riz Ahmed]

kids out there were brought down to dance for the aunties. But I say the mixture of those two things, you know, self expression and navigating identity is something that could be a bit dangerous. Those two elements I think have kind of really forged my whole path and I've been exploring how those two things relate to each other my whole life.

[Jay Shetty]

Yeah, I'm fascinated by those two memories because they, like you said, one's playful and has certain consequences with what happens with that. The validation, the, the praise, the applause for losing control. And then the other one is actually quite. To be in that threatening place as a young man with your brother and feeling the, the racist implications of having that kind of interaction with some.

[Riz Ahmed]

So many people. I mean I'm sure you experienced a

[Jay Shetty]

lot of that 100% when you said Golu I was like so I was overweight growing up. So I was bullied for that. I was bullied for the color of my skin because the area I grew up in there weren't a lot of people of our color. And so I get it. Like I hear that and that doesn't make it any more normal or easy or better for any of us. It's just like no, that's what you went through But I can also relate to the other side of the. I could totally relate to everything you just said. I'm just like, we'd be at, like an event and the act had pulled out or something, and then my mom would be like, all right, you got to go on stage and save the day. And I'm like, what do you mean? Like, I haven't prepared anything. I'm not ready for this. And I'd have to figure it out.

[Riz Ahmed]

We're all out here just trying to please aunties.

[Jay Shetty]

Literally. Literally trying to do. What is up with that? And the funny thing is where I was saying this to you earlier and I saved it, but I was like, you know, like, you. You kind of. You lived the auntie's dream. Like, you went to a great school. You then went to Oxford and did ppe. For anyone who doesn't know, that's the Prime Minister's degree. Like, the prime ministers of England, I think pretty much every single one of them did PPE at Oxford as a subject. Like, is. It is the most world class degree could possibly do in the whole entire country. Then you go, I want to become an actor. And then you go, be an actor, too. I'm like, you did it. Like, you, you did the academic dream. You did the. You did your dream. Like, when you look at it from that perspective of, hey, wait a minute, I actually lived every dream here. When you look back and go, what is my dream now? Or uncovering what. What is Riz Ahmed's dream? Do you have anything that feels close?

[Riz Ahmed]

You know, it's so interesting hearing you say this, because I don't know if you have this, Jay. If I sit back here and I say, jay, you've done this thing. You brought kind of mindfulness and this Eastern philosophy to, like, the world. You've got the world's number one health podcast, all this kind of stuff, you're aware of those things possibly as facts, but your internal experience of it, does it really land like that? Or does it feel like a series of mistakes that went right, moments of hubris that went wrong? A journey that's constantly unfolding that you're not quite in control of. And in many ways, like, you don't stop to, like, breathe it, but maybe you. I mean, I'm sure you stop to breathe all the time, so you stop to kind of, you know, kind of really have check out that perspective. But when you're saying these things about kind of living the dream or whatever, I guess I don't see it like that. I feel Very grateful for my journey. And maybe the reason why I don't see it like that is I realized that all these kind of external markers of achievement, they don't really land, they don't really land in the way you think they will. The award, the round of applause, these fleeting moments, these moments of kind of these dopamine hits, those moments of the little kid dancing in front of the aunties being handed another cup of Coca Cola in a round of applause. And you know, those moments, they feel nice, they feel good, but they're very fleeting, they don't nourish you on a soul level, those external things. I think what we're searching for as artists, as storytellers, as actors, but really any of us is a sense of flow. You know that moment when you forget yourself. It's that feeling when you're not literally self conscious and you talk about this so much, right? And this, this feeling of connection to all things and all people. And every now and again, in a fleeting moment, whether you're lost in a jigsaw puzzle you love or a video game, or on stage performing or in a conversation playing with your kid, you forget yourself. And that's the thing I'm chasing. It's trying to live in that as much as possible. Both in my art and in my life. I want to try and just find a way of just living as close as possible to that pocket, rather than these milestones and these trophies and these things of achievement. Of course, we all have an ego. We need one. I'm still setting goals, I'm still setting targets. We're still living in this world. But I've realized in a weird way, having achieved some of those things, having ticked some of those boxes, doesn't feed your soul in the way you think it will.

[Jay Shetty]

It makes so much sense because I think as humans, we're only good at living in the two extremes. So one is, life is all about goals. It's about the milestone, it's about winning, and I want to get there. And then the other option is, oh, none of that matters. I've just got a B. And really it's all in the middle somewhere, like you're saying, which is, I need to have goals and I need to know where I'm going. But I know that that's not the thing that's going to feed my soul or make me feel full. I've been just thinking about this a lot lately because I talk about these things and I practice these things, but then you meet someone who does it better than you more naturally, more effortlessly,

[Riz Ahmed]

and you go, you're talking about me, Jay?

[Jay Shetty]

Yeah, yeah, I was talking about you.

[Riz Ahmed]

Thank you.

[Jay Shetty]

I was talking about one of my friends who's like. She can make. Like, if she saw a beautiful colored flower on the side of a road, she would stop and grab them and feel like someone just gave her a million dollars.

[Riz Ahmed]

Oh, amazing.

[Jay Shetty]

And it sounds ridiculous to say it, but having watched her do that, I'm just like, that's what I want. Like, to be, you know, to be able to turn that really ordinary, simple moment.

[Riz Ahmed]

Yes.

[Jay Shetty]

Into feeling like it's the most ordinary. And we see this in kids. I know you're a dad, too, and it's like, you see this in kids. When you watch a kid just marvel

[Riz Ahmed]

at something and they're lost in the moment. You know, there's that classic stereotypical thing of, like, I'm trying to get everyone out of the house. Put on your shoes, because we've got somewhere to be. Milestone, objective, achievement goal. And the kid is, like, playing with the Velcro on the shoes. And it's that. Yeah, that's the thing. That's what it's all about. It's this moment. What you're saying kind of reminds me of. Obviously, there's that cliche. It's not the destination, it's a journey. But I think you need to set the destination so that you get to experience the journey. And that's what I'm talking about. It's like, you can aim to achieve xyz. Just know that XYZ isn't going to be the juice. The juice is going to be that feeling of flow that, if you're lucky, you might feel trying to get there. You know, the love that we've got on bait was overwhelming for me, in a way, because it was so personal, because it was drawn from such a. All my insecurities and neuroses in such a personal place. Not because I'm trying to do something that's all about me, actually, because I think those feelings are universal. I started. I was just saying to my wife, it's like, should I be enjoying that more? Should it be landing more? And that's when I realized, like, it's actually the reward was the process of making. It was the process of reaching inside to a vulnerable place and kind of offering it up. There's that moment of offering is that moment of letting go. There's this sample at the start of a J. Cole track called the Climb Back. The track's called the Climb Back. And I think it's a sample from a very old audiobook called the Tao of Leadership. And it says you need to ask yourself why are you doing this work? Is it to get or is it to let go? That's it. When you reaching inside to share something and it's an offering that is the reward. Man, that feeling of lightness, that expansiveness, the things you get back from it, they're nice. But it's never going to be the juice like that letting go was. So I'm trying to making my peace with that now. Ryan Reynolds here from Mint Mobile. I don't know if you knew this, but anyone can get the same Premium Wireless for $15 a month plan that I've been enjoying.

[Jay Shetty]

It's not just for celebrities. So do like I did and have

[Riz Ahmed]

one of your assistant's assistants switch you

[Jay Shetty]

to Mint Mobile today.

[Riz Ahmed]

I'm told it's super easy to [e-mail]

[Cindy Crawford]

Switch upfront payment of $45 for three month plan equivalent to $15 per month required intro rate first three months only, then full price plan options available, taxes and fees extra. See full [e-mail] hi, I'm Cindy Crawford and I'm the founder of meaningful beauty. When Dr. Sabah and I decided to do a skincare line together, he said to me, we are going to give women meaningful beauty. And I said, that's exactly right. We want to give women meaningful beauty. Which means each and every product is meaningful. It has a reason to exist. It's efficacious. You're going to get results and then you just go out and live your life. Meaningful Beauty confidence is beautiful. Learn more@meaningful beauty.com

[Riz Ahmed]

have you ever found yourself craving a cold snack?

[Cindy Crawford]

Yep.

[Riz Ahmed]

Montucky makes my favorite cold snack. It's a cold snackable beer. Montucky is a light American lager from Bozeman, Montana.

[Jay Shetty]

Go to montuckycold snacks.com snack-finder to find

[Riz Ahmed]

Montucky cold snacks and a retailer near you.

[Jay Shetty]

And if you're looking for some Montucky

[Riz Ahmed]

merch, use important snacks all one word

[Jay Shetty]

for 20% off their merch store. That's huge though, to even be attempting to do that because it's so easy to stay on the hamster wheel. It's almost easier to just keep producing, keep building, keep putting out, keep doing that thing. You had this great line. I think you said it in one of the interviews. And it's, it's, it's in the themes of bait. It's even in, I believe it might Even be in the show. But you said, like, life just feels like one big audition. And I wanted to ask you about that. I think it's such a great line because I think people are exhausted, feeling like their life just feels like one

[Riz Ahmed]

big audition, big time.

[Jay Shetty]

And we see obviously your character, Charlotte, if like he's going for an actual audition, but then his life turns into pretending. Like everything has to be about that moment and he has to be that character in his normal life. And I think we do that to ourselves. Is it possible to live as if life is not an audition?

[Riz Ahmed]

Yeah, that is really the central idea of the show. That's why the show is based around an audition. It's not really a show about being an actor. It's about this. We always feel like we are all auditioning. And that's because I think of social media to a considerable extent, the attention economy that we all exist in, that our value is about our visibility. And so we're all constantly performing this version of ourselves that we think we should be, that we think people want us to be. That's true on your LinkedIn profile, on a zoom call on your social media. Just as it is for an. For an actor. Right. Like, here's the script. I have to behave like a more desirable, put together, successful version of myself. But actually I can't make sense of this script of life. And I'm having a panic attack. And so how do you switch that off? How do you kind of like stop performing? I think it's really interesting because you could say, well, you know what? It's about being really vulnerable. It's about embracing your messiness. You can also get into, like, performative vulnerability. I think so much of it isn't

[Jay Shetty]

about what you do.

[Riz Ahmed]

It's about why you're doing it and how you're doing it. And I have to be honest, at least for myself, like, I've never gotten to a point where I feel like I've cracked this, but I have some days, some afternoons where I just feel like it's not about me. Yeah, I've forgotten myself. I'm in that sense of flow. And ironically, that's when things are going the best, you know, when I'm not thinking about them in that way. But I don't know. I mean, how do you kind of find this as well, particularly kind of operating in a world that's about mindfulness and meditation and finding your purpose on a spiritual level. But of course, the medium is often digital and social media. And how do you square that circle because it must be. In a way, it's similar as, like,

[Jay Shetty]

being an actor 100%.

[Riz Ahmed]

You know, you're trying to do something spiritual and forgetting yourself, but you're doing it with people watching.

[Jay Shetty]

I haven't figured it out either. It would be stupid to say I have. And I'm grappling with it, too. And that's why this interview is so exciting to me, because the themes in Bait are so universal, no matter what you do. And like you said, whether someone's applying for a job on LinkedIn or whether they're just trying to make their mom happy or whatever it may be, it's all in there. And so for me, I started to realize that. And you'd feel this way, but as an actor, it's slightly different, because with an actor, everyone thinks you are your roles. So, right. Like, if someone meets Chris Hemsworth, they think he's Thor. And, like, they think they get in a picture, man. Yeah, yeah. They think they get a picture with Thor. If you see Robert Downey Jr. You think you're with Iron man, like, that, you know, Tony Stark, like, that's who you're in love with. You're not. You don't know who Robert Downey Jr. Is. Same with Riz Ahmed.

[Riz Ahmed]

Whereas for you, the public and private self, there's an authenticity. There's a coherence to it.

[Jay Shetty]

Yes, there is, in the sense of, yes, I do this in real life and I do it online, but I'm also a complete human being with lots of other desires and lots of other complexities. So, like, what I try and do as much as I can, which helps me more than helps anyone else, is like, I try not to say anything profound when I'm around people. Because. Because it's.

[Riz Ahmed]

People come over for a dinner party,

[Jay Shetty]

they're expecting, Jay's going to be dropping some jazz. I'm like, literally the plainest.

[Riz Ahmed]

You're like, yeah, just. Man United scores.

[Jay Shetty]

Yeah, exactly. I would literally start talking about football because all I'm trying to do is like, I don't want to play up to the caricature of what I think I've become. It's like a comedian that just thinks they have to be funny all the time. So I can feel like, oh, God, I've just got to be. Everything that comes out my mouth has to be profound. And not. Is not only is that not realistic, it's not possible. I'm not. I'm a normal person. Like, not everything I say is, like, deep and life changing. And I don't even want to be that. And so it's this fascinating thing that I'm always dealing with.

[Riz Ahmed]

It makes you feel better. Jay, the time we've spent, have you always felt to me to be very superficial?

[Jay Shetty]

Thank you.

[Riz Ahmed]

I know that's what you want to hear. Yeah. But.

[Jay Shetty]

Yeah. So I think my point is I'm always, in one sense, compensating for that by creating moments of breaking the image.

[Riz Ahmed]

You know, somebody said something really interesting to me that, in a way, inspired the whole show of bait. Right. It was this one thing, was this feeling of life for all of us feels like an audition. The other thing was the distance between your public and private self is the amount of shame that you carry. The distance between how you want to be seen or how people see you and who you are. When no one's watching that performance that we are all living in, that's actually about. That's a measurement of shame. And I was like, I want to do something in that spot. And for me, in that. That space between those two versions of yourself, that space really started opening up for me a lot about 10 years ago, when I started to become more known in America, doing some work here and doing things like Star Wars. That is when it just felt so at odds. You know, the perception and the reality couldn't be more different. And that's something that's stressful, absurd, but also kind of funny. And so I wanted to kind of liberate myself of that shame, hopefully invite other people to liberate themselves of that shame as well by. By actually trying to collapse that distance between the public and private self. So I'm always an actor. What if I make a show that's taking all my vulnerabilities and neuroses and laugh about them and put them out there? And there's so much in the show that's really directly from my upbringing. There's that skinhead moment, a version of it. I had a panic attack once when I was supporting Wu Tang Clan in concert at Kenishtown Forum in North London. We refilmed me having a panic attack. Kentish Town Forum, I said, I want to do the same place. I want to burst out into the same alleyway and have the same panic attack there. Even, you know, the British Security Services MI5 and MI6 recruiting my character, they've tried to do that with me.

[Jay Shetty]

I can't believe. That's a crazy story.

[Riz Ahmed]

After I became more known as an actor, they reached out several times, saying, do you want to help us with messaging? Do you want to sit down. I was like, I'm an artist. I'm not getting involved, mate. No, thank you. But I just tried to take all these kind of moments of confusion and contradiction and try and put them out there. Because, like you said that the gap between your public and private self can feel like a straitjacket. And I think we're all doing it. You don't have to be you or me. Like I said, we're all kind of performing. It feels like these days. Yeah.

[Jay Shetty]

And I feel the challenges, and I love that idea. The one that you shared just now. This. The gap between your public and private self. How big shame is or how deep the shame you experience is. And I think that the biggest challenge becomes when you never leave the stage. And so everyone has to perform. Everyone has to perform at work. Everyone has to perform with family. You know, there's going to be places in your life where you have to perform. Life is that way. But if you never leave the stage and you feel like your performance on stage is who you are and is reflective of your worth, that feels like when you're really stuck. Because now you're saying, the value I get from being on the stage is all the value I have.

[Riz Ahmed]

And especially if, when you leave the stage, you're trying to be as boring as possible. Do you know what I'm trying to say? You're trying to be as imperfect as possible. What is love? What is your safe place? What are your safe relationships? The place where you don't have to perform, where you get to be the messy, chaotic, neurotic, boring version of yourself, and so these weird things happen. Is like, the place of love and safety is a place where. And it should be like this, you know, like, my cousins, they laugh about what I do. You are friends with one of my cousins, right?

[Jay Shetty]

And we play football together, like, 15 years.

[Riz Ahmed]

Exactly right. But what I think I love about that WhatsApp group, my cousins, is when I got nominated for an Oscar for acting, one of my cousins genuinely was like, okay, cool. Like, what is that a big deal? Is that, like, when I won Regional Employee of the Month, I was about to say, like, well, tetchy is not like winning Regional employee. And another cousin came in and went, no, it's not like that. Because you actually won that award. Regional employee in the month. He didn't win.

[Jay Shetty]

Oh, wow.

[Riz Ahmed]

It's.

[Jay Shetty]

That's.

[Riz Ahmed]

That's healthy. That's. That's good. Do you know what I mean? To have your safe place be one where those things don't matter. Where the performance is immaterial, but it can be lopsided.

[Jay Shetty]

Right.

[Riz Ahmed]

That's why people get addicted to being out there and getting a pat on the back.

[Jay Shetty]

Not only are we trying to be liked or validated, it's like what bait, again, is set up for is trying to be something you're not. So obviously your character's trying to become the next James Bond. And it's not really about Bond. It's this idea of I'm trying to be something I'm not. And I think that is even more difficult than just trying to be liked. Because before, there's one version of you trying to be liked for who you are, and now you're trying to be liked for someone you'll never be. And that's like an even more complicated place to be. Because now you're taking on traits, personality types, clothing, whatever. I mean, I'm half disappointed. Didn't show up in a tux today. You know that, right? Like, it's like for everyone else, the subway takes. You show up in a tux, everyone

[Riz Ahmed]

else have to be. This is where I get to be boring.

[Jay Shetty]

You know, boring look great, but. Yeah, it's like. But that idea of trying to be someone we're not, I find that to be like the. The golden handcuffs, the drug of society. Where I remember when I started, when I left the monastery and I started working in the corporate world just to pay the bills and survive, I remember thinking to myself, this place is trying to make me someone that I'm not.

[Riz Ahmed]

Yeah.

[Jay Shetty]

And I could spend 30 years here becoming someone that I'm not. Become partner, could make money, whatever. And that's the challenge. People having to work with. Because we're lucky. We get to express who we are through our work and tell stories and everything. But when I think about someone who's like, yeah, I've got, you know, Riz, that's what I've got to do every day. Like, I have to be someone I'm not.

[Riz Ahmed]

Do you think that we all have an essential essence and go, this is who you are? Like I said, I grew up code switching with these very different sides to myself. Wearing a school uniform at school and then Shavakamis at home, and then Reebok Classics and fake Versace out with my friends. Literally changing costumes, accent and personality. It was a form of acting. Now I try and bring all of that together, making things like Bait or my version of Hamlet or whatever, where we bring these different things together in one place. Do we have an essential center? Isn't it just about our circumstances and our environment. This is when I'm asking you to say something profound. J, I need you to help me out with this. What's your take on this? Do you think we have, like, okay, this is you at your core, and that's you at your core.

[Jay Shetty]

I believe that life is more about a collection and connection of ideas and stories and narratives that you've built as opposed to a center. That was always the case and. Right. It can sound easy to say it, but actually it's really hard. Like I always say to people, I'm as much in love with monk wisdom as I am with building a media empire as I am with being a loving partner as I am with a good friend. Like, I'm, like, in love with all of those parts of myself, and I'm, like, trying to become okay with all of those things.

[Riz Ahmed]

Those things that are seen as contradictions,

[Jay Shetty]

correct and paradoxical, and they feel like they don't mesh. But I'm like, if everyone sat down and asked themselves who they were. I think we all have paradoxes within that. We've been taught to say, I'm an accountant. I'm married. I'm Hindu, I'm whatever it is. Like, we've been taught to have very simple labels which are very, you know, incomplete.

[Riz Ahmed]

Yeah. And I guess it's like, less about finding yourself means being in one lane. Yeah, I don't believe in that.

[Jay Shetty]

Yeah.

[Riz Ahmed]

I think that having all these different sides to who we are is. Is human and universal and healthy in a way. Over the last 10 years or so, I kind of really went on this journey of trying to make work from a more personal place. When I came into this game, I felt like for some reason, I had to justify it beyond just myself enjoying it now. I'm like, actually, my joy is valid. You know, joy. And if other people take joy from my work, that's valid as. But I always felt like it's gotta be a. Have a greater purpose. Right. And for me, that was about trying to stretch culture. This idea of one person at a time, one film screening, one performance at a time, opening people's hearts and minds to an experience that they didn't think they could relate to. But actually, wow, I recognize myself in it. It's like, I was a big fan of watching the Crown. And, you know when you're watching the Crown, you're suddenly like, I'm the Queen of England. That's me. I'm her. I totally get, you know, how it's this amazing body swap that story can achieve, right? And so to try and open people's hearts and minds to realizing that we're all the same, we're all one, and to stretch culture in that way. And before, I used to think, okay, that means me popping up in all these roles that are as different as possible to me, change people's ideas about who can play that role, who can be in a Star wars movie, and all this kind of stuff. And now more and more, I think, like, I want to share the messy contradiction of myself. I used to think acting was about putting on the mask. Now I think it's about taking it off. It's actually about sharing the most personal thing possible. And that ends up being the most universal thing. You know, something actually I've never really talked about publicly before Jay, but I did this film called Mogul Mowgli. And it's about a guy who, an artist who suddenly loses his ability to walk, becomes tremendously ill overnight and is never sure if he's going to get his life back. It was an exploration of lots of themes that I was interested in creatively. But what people don't know is that that, that basically really happened to me. It was 2015 and I just started filming Star Wars. I'd never done studio movie before, never done a big franchise. I never thought it would. That would be my path. I was really happy doing indies like Nightcrawler and Four Lions. I suddenly got to be in this film set with stormtroopers and all these big things. I was like, wow, is this, is it gonna happen for me? One week into filming that, I started getting this weird pain in my legs. And I thought, okay, maybe I've pulled something during one of the action scenes. And I woke up one morning and I couldn't get out of bed and I couldn't walk, tried to go to a hospital. They were like, they just kind of like palm me off. They didn't, weren't really sure what it was. I went to the hospital back in my parents neighborhood, the same hospital I was born in. When I was visiting my parents said, let me go and check, get checked out there. They immediately saw what was happening and they were like, you need to be admitted to hospital straight away. I remember saying, I can't do that. I'm filming Star wars right now. And they said, you're in a very dangerous situation right now and I'll explain to you what's happening, but you need to be hospitalized immediately. And I just felt like, what's happening to me is my life kind of Falling apart before my eyes. I ended up spending two and a half months in hospital. I was unable to walk. I went down to just under 50 kilos. Wow, 100 pounds. You know, I couldn't lift my arms, I couldn't walk. And yeah, I was kind of going to a stroke gym every day. A weird thing happens when your life falls apart like that. When you're confronted with your complete lack of control. It's really humbling. You realize, if I don't even control my own body, then maybe everything that I do have is a gift. And I remember being in hospital. Forget going back to film the rest of Star wars, forget having a career ever being able to walk again. I remember being sat there and seeing like a pigeon sat on the windowsill of this NHS hospital and being almost moved to tears by its beauty. It sounds, maybe, sounds crazy, but maybe you can relate to what I'm saying where you're just like, man, I did nothing to deserve that pigeon coming to visit me. I get to see up close, pigeons are actually amazing. They're like a little bit green and red and you're getting seeing the sunlight

[Jay Shetty]

shine off of it.

[Riz Ahmed]

This thing that I'd taken for granted, I was just absolutely blown away by this animal, this wild animal that was there. And I felt this sense of such humility and gratitude. And I've always believed ever since then, it's when you're brought to your knees that you're halfway towards praying. It brings you closer to the love in the universe. And I went on a real journey. And that's when I kind of really started meditating in earnest. I had this kind of crazy, crazy journey where I had to kind of almost grieve and let go of my life the way I thought it would be. And it was almost like I felt like God or the universe was saying all this stuff that you want. It's like happening for you now, right? Make sure you appreciate it. Don't take it for granted. You know, I was being taught gratitude just before being given the gift. My friends are texting me like, bro, I've just seen the Star wars photos, man. Like, you're gonna be in Star Wars. Yeah. I'm in a hospital desperately trying to get the nurses attention because I can't get out to go to the toilet and I don't want to wet the bed. My life is just. It couldn't be more different to what people are perceiving it to be. It was something about that experience made me want to start turning work from a personal place. And the reason for that is that I felt a lot of shame around it. I felt a deep sense of shame. I've never really talked about it publicly even now, but for anyone else going through that right now, wanted to kind of share that and offer that as an experience, because I felt this kind of weird shame, and I felt this critical inner voice coming out that was like, you deserve this. This is what you should be. You thought you belonged up here. Nah, you're getting straight back down.

[Jay Shetty]

This is your fate.

[Riz Ahmed]

How dare you think you could be happy? You have the things you want. And all this shame and all this kind of like this really venomous voice was coming out, and I was like, actually, this is the thing that's killing me. The only way to heal myself of that voice is by owning it, is owning my experience, losing the shame around my experience, losing my shame around who I am. That's what Mogul Mowgli is about. That's what bait is about. Because I believe, you know, what happened to me was a kind of autoimmune condition, right? An autoimmune condition is when the body attacks itself. And I know we're both big fans of that book. The body keeps a Score, you know, it was my belief that I was at war with myself, that my critical inner voice was so out of control. I was always attacking myself, beating myself over the stick so much that, in a way, my body had turned on itself. I mean, I told this story jokingly before about what I'm about to tell you, which is two years after I'd finished filming the night of, I'd still get up in the middle of the night, go to the bathroom, and start running scenes again. This is. The show has come out. I want an Emmy for this role. It's done. But I should have moved on my life. But still, in the back of my head, it's like, not good enough. You're not good enough. That's embarrassing how you think that was good? Get back up there, do it again.

[Jay Shetty]

Wow.

[Riz Ahmed]

So I had this voice in me, and my Is my belief that that critical inner voice led me to that hospital bed. And I had to look it in the eye and say, no more shame, man. No more shame. I'm going to own this. I'm going to create work from this. And that's what Sound of Metal was. That's where Mogul Mowgli was coming from, that direct experience. And the universe brought me Sound of Metal, which was also about an artist going through a health crisis. And I was like, no, no, you're not done with it. You got to go back there. You got to make work from this place. Yeah, man. I have long, deep history with this critical voice and this shame, and I really think it can kill you, man. It's not something that I'm done with, but I think that critical inner voice just. He's not the guy on the megaphone, but he's a guy who's always going to be at the party. If I'm lucky, he's at the corner of the party.

[Cindy Crawford]

Hi, I'm Cindy Crawford, and I'm the founder of Meaningful Beauty. Well, I don't know about you, but, like, I never liked being told, oh, wow, you look so good for your age. Like, why even bother saying that? Why don't you just say you look great at any age? Every age. That's what Meaningful Beauty is all about. We create products that make you feel confident in your skin at the age you are now. Meaningful Beauty. Beautiful skin at every age. Learn more@meaningful beauty.com.

[Jay Shetty]

hey, guys.

[Riz Ahmed]

Have you ever found yourself craving a cold snack?

[Jay Shetty]

Yep.

[Riz Ahmed]

Do you even know what a cold snack is?

[Jay Shetty]

I do.

[Riz Ahmed]

Well, some of you may have noticed I've been wearing a Montucky shirt on the video version of the podcast. And that's because Montucky makes my favorite cold snack.

[Jay Shetty]

That's right.

[Riz Ahmed]

It's a cold, snackable beer, and summer is the best time to enjoy it. You're right, Ders. Montucky is a light American lager from Bozeman, Montana.

[Jay Shetty]

It's snackable, shareable, and perfect for all occasions. Hey, that sounds like the dream beer to me. Go to montuckycoldsnacks.com snack-finder to find Montucky

[Riz Ahmed]

cold snacks and a retailer near you.

[Jay Shetty]

And if you're looking for some Montucky

[Riz Ahmed]

merch, use important snacks all one word

[Jay Shetty]

for 20% off their merch store.

[Riz Ahmed]

They got some cold horses on those cans.

[Jay Shetty]

Cold snacks.

[Cindy Crawford]

This year, it's Pop's turn for a laugh. So celebrate Father's Day with a gift that really pops. A customized Funko Pop of him. First, think of all the things that make your dad the man. Then turn those ideas into a personalized Funko Pop. Select hair, clothing, and skin tone options to match his fit. Don't forget to show off his favorite hobbies and sports with amazing accessories. You can even add his best friend. Start creating [e-mail].

[Riz Ahmed]

be unique, not anyone else. Express it now.

[Jay Shetty]

Just pop yourself.

[Cindy Crawford]

That's funko.com.

[Jay Shetty]

As hard as it may be, Talk to me about the lowest moment, the worst day of going through that time in hospital because those are the moments that we all have experienced rock bottom. But those are the moments you never hear people talk about because they're scary.

[Riz Ahmed]

Yeah.

[Jay Shetty]

And, and I feel like when I'm hearing you talk about them, like, sounds like you were dealing with a lot. For something mental to become physically that debilitating when you're a fit young man, healthy man in general, like that means there was, there was a real war within yourself, as you rightly said it. Talk to me as much as you can about that.

[Riz Ahmed]

I was alone at night in the hospital and they were pumping me full of a lot of steroids intravenously. And steroids keep you up, right. And I couldn't sleep and I just felt completely alone. Whatever was going on with me, it was resistant to treatment. So I got a tiny bit better. And then it went, it was going south. And it started sensing that maybe there was some. It might be affecting my heart and it might be affecting my ability to breathe. And it was certainly was affecting my ability to swallow. I remember this because the people on set of Star Wars, God bless them, they carried on sending me food to the hospital and I was having trouble swallowing it. And I was like, am I going to make my way out of this? Am I going to die? Here is what I started asking myself and I started talking to God. And I remember that rock bottom moment again. Like I said, when you're brought to your knees, that's when you're halfway to praying. It was that moment of total helplessness that I started talking to God. And I said, if you please give me a chance, if you please let me live, I promise you, as much as I can, I will give, I want to give. And what I meant by that was. And I said, like, I just feel I haven't emptied myself yet. You know, I've got more to give. And I remember just pleading with God and just the tears just streaming down my face and just saying, yeah, if you just let me live, if you let me get through this, I promise you I will empty myself and try and give from whatever you've given me. And it was incredibly scary. And the next morning, I remember they said, they said that they might have to start a really intensive kind of chemo on me.

[Jay Shetty]

God, man, I mean, that's like, it's a harrowing time like in your life. Like, that's like just when I hear about. Because I, I not, not. It wasn't life threatening, but my Version of the mental training, the physical was I developed while I was a monk. I developed polyps in my throat. And so these get on your vocal cords. And people generally get it from, like, vocal exhaustion or lack of vocal rest or some sort of vocal disruption. And I think for us in the monastery, it was mantra, it was chanting, it was, you know, and, and I do not have a singing voice, for whatever it's worth. But I think my, my vocal range is pretty limited, and I was probably straining it. I don't even know how it happened. That's, that's the physical version. But we all know there's. Well, from what we're talking about, there's so much more to it, whether it's a lack of expression, a lack of authentic communication of where you're at. And I remember having to get them lasered off my throat. And so I went into surgery, got them lasered off. It's, it's, it's pretty like, you know, you don't feel it. You're sedated. It's not. Like I said, it's not life threatening, but like, for months after, you're drinking from a straw because you can't eat proper food.

[Riz Ahmed]

Okay.

[Jay Shetty]

And you can't talk. So I have a whiteboard. And I remember moving in back in my parents at the time, because I couldn't be in the monastery, and I would literally write to my mom, like, what I could eat, water, whatever it was. And I'm literally carrying a whiteboard around my neck, basically, and just writing stuff to my family because I can't say anything. And at that time, I'm like, I give speeches at colleges, I give talks to the temple. I'm, I'm, I'm like, speaking is my thing. Like, that's what I do, of course. And it's all gone, of course, disappeared. And I can't even say anything. Like, I'm. I'm writing words on a whiteboard. And I remember feeling very similarly to what you're saying about seeing that pigeon praying to God. Like, I can relate to it. Again, like, mine was not life threatening. It wasn't. You know, there's a difference between not speaking and not walking.

[Riz Ahmed]

No, but it's profound because it's your. Your gift turns to your curse 100%. It's like the thing that you are blessed with, which is this ability to communicate and this desire, this purpose you have, that is the thing that's taken from you.

[Jay Shetty]

Correct.

[Riz Ahmed]

And so how has that affected the way that you. I mean, did that just make you even more motivated to speak and to choose your words and think about your words.

[Jay Shetty]

Yeah. I had to go to a vocal coach to train and all of that kind of stuff. And they said that you would get your, you know, your natural voice would come back. It came back softer. I'd lost the raspiness and the depth of my voice. I sounded different now. Now I sound back to normal. If anything, maybe it's a bit better now, so I've got to take it. But, like, at the time, it was like. I was like, God, I'm gonna have to learn how to talk again. Like, that's how it felt. And what it did for me was a few things. I remember talking to one spiritual guide at the time, and I said to him, I said, I can't speak to God out loud anymore. Like, I can't hear myself talk to God. I can't chant. I can't. Mantra is such a big part of Eastern tradition. I can't. I can't chant out loud. And you're meant to chant out loud so you can hear the spiritual sacred sound. Like, that's our practice. And he goes to me, he goes, God's teaching you to chant with your heart, like. And I was like, God, like that. That. At that time, I just remember that, like, hitting me. It was like. He was like, yeah, you think. Well, you think you talk to God out loud? Like, you think that's what God listens to? He's like, God's listening to this. Like, God knows what's going on in here. It's got nothing to do with sound and voice. And I was like, wow, that. That's huge. To learn to talk to God with my heart. Like, what does that even mean?

[Riz Ahmed]

Yes.

[Jay Shetty]

And then at the same time, it's what you said where it was like, okay, now that my voice is starting to come back, how am I going to respect the fact that I have a voice? Like, to. And, you know, to not take it for granted, to be like, how can you feel that? This ease with which we're talking right now and we're communicating and I can hear you. You can hear me. When that goes away, God, life feels colorless, and, you know, it loses so much value. And so again. And, you know, we were talking about this offline as well. Like, when you. Of course, you forget all this, you

[Riz Ahmed]

start taking all the gifts for granted again. You probably have to, in a way, to try and kind of move through the trauma. But I don't know if you have moments where you remember that and you just sink into that deep sense of humility and gratitude and.

[Jay Shetty]

Humility is the word. I mean, you're taking me back there. Actually. I don't think I've actually thought about this. I don't even. I don't think I've talked about it publicly, to be honest, myself. I don't. I can't remember if I've actually talked about it. And I'm being reminded of your experience. Like your. Your experience triggering me, going, yeah, like that.

[Riz Ahmed]

You know, that was intense.

[Jay Shetty]

That was intense. And. And I was traumatic. Yeah, it was traumatic. But all of that to say with all of yours. Talk to me about where does the shame come from? Going through something like that and then not wanting to share it. Because I think there's the pain of going through something traumatic, and there's. Then there's the pain of communicating it to a group of people who may or may not actually understand what the hell you just went through. Yeah, but talk to me about where was the shame for you in wanting, shared that and what kept in for so long? I. I will.

[Riz Ahmed]

But can I first tell you something about your voice?

[Jay Shetty]

Yeah.

[Riz Ahmed]

I love your voice, but here's the thing. When I. Sometimes I'm walking down the street, it doesn't happen to me a lot, but it's happened to me enough times I want to mention it. Sometimes people stop me and they say. Say I'm on the phone or whatever. They've heard me talking. They go, sorry, can I just tell you? You sound exactly like Jay Shetty.

[Jay Shetty]

That is hilarious. I'll take that as a compliment.

[Riz Ahmed]

I take it as a compliment, bro. You'd make an amazing mc. I think you've got a great. You got a great voice for that. We leave the Alfie mixtapes in the past.

[Jay Shetty]

Come on, man.

[Riz Ahmed]

So I just want to. Gonna give your voice its flowers. Yeah, the shame. You know, I think that the show is about this idea of wanting to be James Bond. I wanted that. I mean, who doesn't? Or if not exactly that, a version of that, then what I mean by that is, like, you want to aspire to this archetype of. Of heroism, and that is about being this kind of invulnerable, powerful alpha male, whatever that means. Although hilariously, I mean, the alpha male in a wolf pack is the animal that lets the kids beat it up the most, you know, and it's like the most chill and the least aggressive. Right. But we have these ideas in our culture, and I guess I didn't want to. I already felt like I don't fit the mold, you know, for all the reasons we've already discussed, that we experienced growing up. I don't want another strike against me of people somehow thinking I'm weak, you know, or I'm fragile or I. Whereas now I look at it as, like. Well, actually, I feel like I showed a lot of resources and strength and grit, mental and physical, you know, teaching yourself to walk again or lift your arms or whatever, that takes strength. And I can say that now. The time I just saw the glass half empty of it, and I thought, I don't even want anyone to think that I'm weak, that I'm broken, that I'm not up to. Up to the mark.

[Jay Shetty]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Riz Ahmed]

And in a way, I actually think that there's some truth in that, that I think the culture has shifted a little bit more. You know, I think we do because of spaces like this man that you've created and other people have created, where we can talk and celebrate our vulnerabilities a bit more. You know, I mean. I mean, it's talking about this right now. My body right now is kind of like going, oh, God, yeah. Did I just say all this? Did I do all this? But I also feel a bit lighter. It's that thing of digging inside, like I said, and it's an offering, you know, if there's someone going through something like this, that's watching this, if it normalizes their experience, if it makes them feel less alone, then that's beautiful, you know, And I want to share that. I. I think it was that really. I think it was kind of my. Again, it was the distance between that public and private self, and I felt that if my public self gets too close to my reality, it'll fall apart again.

[Jay Shetty]

Yeah. Well said. Yeah. No, I. I really believe you sharing that, especially talking about perception in that externally, everyone can be like, you're winning. Your career has been amazing. You won Emmys. Like, Oscar. No, you know, all this stuff, and it's like, to actually go, oh, wait a minute. Even him, like, there's. There's stuff he's going through not only is affecting him mentally, physically, and that mental. Physical connection that I want people to make here, which I know you do, too, which is this idea that a lot of what we're going through physically is coming from some sort of emotional block, mental block. And in Bait, you visualize that as this severed pig's head, which is this Patrick Stewart voice, severed pig's head.

[Riz Ahmed]

So, yes, the critical inner voice in Bait is A severed pig's head. It was sent to the family as a racist attack. And it's about, I guess, how we can internalize the criticism of us, internalize the prejudice. So it starts to become. Come almost like his best friend, like. And for me, for a long time, my critical inner voice was something I didn't want to lose. I was worried that if I make peace with it or turn the volume down on that too much, I'll get lazy, I'll get complacent. I remember even when, when we won an Oscar for our short film, it's so funny, it was almost like the Oscar was looking at me going, you ain't. The kind of elation lasted as long as me going there, collecting it, going backstage, going to the toilet, coming back and sitting down again. By the time I sit down, in fact, I would say my critical inner voice was at an all time high when I was sat there holding that Oscar in my hand because it was almost like a survival mechanism. My brain was going, that voice, that part of my brain was going, don't put your feet up now. Don't think you can get complacent. Don't kick back. I have programmed you to strive, not to savor. And so you now are going to

[Jay Shetty]

really crack the whip. It's just.

[Riz Ahmed]

It was just going crazy. I remember sitting there in that seat having the most aggressively critical thoughts to myself. It was like out of control. But in a show, it's played by seven pig's head. I want you to know there was a moment, long moment, where I was like, it has to be J. Shay. We ended up getting Sir Patrick Stewart.

[Jay Shetty]

Yeah, I know, I know.

[Riz Ahmed]

So you lost the role to someone who's. I thought it has to be a really kind of super established actor, one of the greats. So it makes Shah, my character, feel insecure, actually. What if you were my evil twin? I mean, there's not slight resemblance, maybe.

[Jay Shetty]

Yeah.

[Riz Ahmed]

I was like, yeah, what if it should be Jay? Jay should be my critical inner voice?

[Jay Shetty]

That would be hilarious. That would have been so funny. But no, Patrick Stewart was. Was the right choice. It was one of those moments in the show where you're. What? Like, it's such a surprise. Right, right. Yeah. Talk to me about that because I think what you just identified is the high performers and overachievers curse, where the inner critic is. What drives you to extraordinary success, do you think? Usually. Right. Usually. From everyone I've interviewed, whether it's basketball players, whether it's tennis players, whether it's F1 drivers, they all say the same thing. Basically, the athletes who I think are playing at the levels where every inch counts in every minute matters, they all have this crazy inner critic, which they have to learn what to do with it, because in the moment, they have to believe that this point is the only thing that matters. And then as soon as they win or lose the point, they have to believe that point doesn't matter at all.

[Riz Ahmed]

Wow.

[Jay Shetty]

Because that's the switch that. So their code switch. Or that. And that is. That is like, when I'm playing this point, this is the most important point in the world. And then as soon as the point's over, whether I win or lost the point, that point's irrelevant.

[Riz Ahmed]

So you need the inner critic and the inner cheerleader.

[Jay Shetty]

Totally. You've got.

[Riz Ahmed]

And you've got to basically be able to toggle between them both.

[Jay Shetty]

Yeah, it's interesting.

[Riz Ahmed]

I don't want to believe that it. The inner critic is the jet fuel. I want to believe that it's like one of the engines. Right. But there's got to be that other engine, because, you know, I also feel that, Yes, I feel like the inner critic or that fear of failure, the possibility of shame, all these things can drive us, but I think it can also make us quite tense. And I think our best performances come when we're in a state of flow. And that is about, like you're saying, too tight, too loose. That is also about being kind of loose. That's about joy. It's about openness and receptivity and play and curiosity.

[Jay Shetty]

Yeah, yeah.

[Riz Ahmed]

All those things that the critic does not really give us. And so, yeah, for me, it's like on that mixing desk of the voices in my head. You don't want to hear the voices in my head, Jay. There's a lot of them. You're one of them. But I'm trying to just find that right balance and find the right moment to bring up that cheerleader versus the critic.

[Jay Shetty]

I'm glad you said that because I. I would agree with you and I would encourage people to go there, Especially if you're a high achiever, high performer, or even if you. You have goals and you think the only way to get there is to make yourself feel bad and beat yourself up and to actually go, well, that isn't the way I want to get there. There is a way of getting there that isn't that. That just seems to be the most common way that a lot of successful people have got there. But then they didn't like where they got either.

[Riz Ahmed]

I think it can get you to a place, but then it will kill you.

[Jay Shetty]

Yeah, exactly.

[Riz Ahmed]

You know, people would whip horses to, like, make them run faster. Yeah. You're gonna kill that horse at some point, man.

[Jay Shetty]

Yeah. You're gonna really get exhausted. Yeah. That's a great visual.

[Riz Ahmed]

I'm trying to find a way of something else kind of taking over. And honestly, I kind of feel like what you were talking about before, with kids, that's been a great teacher for me. You know, play. Just on a really basic level.

[Jay Shetty]

Yeah. Play.

[Riz Ahmed]

The joy of that. The curiosity of it, actually not being in control. That's been a great teacher for me, not least because, actually, I think kids, you come. You can't control them. Really. I mean, they humble you every day. Right? They. They. They totally kind of, you know, is that thing where you don't raise your kids, they raise you.

[Jay Shetty]

Yeah.

[Riz Ahmed]

So I don't know. I think that that's kind of something. I'm trying to pass the baton from the critic to the. To the cheerleader or to the child.

[Jay Shetty]

Yeah, to the child. I like that. Yeah. There's this. There's this beautiful quote from George Bernard Shaw that I love where he said, we don't stop playing because we get old. We get old because we stop playing. And I love that. Like, it just. It's so good because I'm like, yeah, like, that's why we feel old, is because we stop playing, we stop being curious, we stop marveling at the greatness of a Velcro shoe, that simplicity. And that's why I was looking into it, actually, because that's why, as we get older, I'm sure you feel this way too. Time just flies. Every adult I talk to, they're like, yeah, God, time's just going fast.

[Riz Ahmed]

Apparently, that is a proven fact that our brains subjectively experience time differently as we get older.

[Jay Shetty]

Yes.

[Riz Ahmed]

So in terms of subjectively, the spread of our life and how it feels to our brains is 50% of our life is lived between the age of 0 and 8 years old, which is crazy. That's like half of it. Because of how a day feels when you're a little kid, how expansive and huge it can feel, and how quick a year can feel towards the tail end. So, yeah. As you're starting to feel more and more conscious of time and its passage, like, what is that doing for you? Is that just means streamlining and focusing on the things you really want to, or how are you managing with that?

[Jay Shetty]

At one point in my life, I listened to Steve Jobs's Stanford commencement speech every day for nine months. Wow. In my opinion, it's the best speech ever given because he also knew he was going to die. So I feel like when someone knows

[Riz Ahmed]

they're going to die, it's that death awareness meditation. Right. It's a big part of the kind of monastic tradition in Eastern philosophy.

[Jay Shetty]

Yeah, absolutely. And it's like every word mattered. Like, he didn't. That wasn't performance. If you see him do it, he also just reads it like, deadpan. Like, there's no performance, there's no emphasis, there's no poet. Like, he's not trying.

[Riz Ahmed]

It's just truth.

[Jay Shetty]

Yeah. Because he knows he's gonna die. So it's like there's a. And so I listen to that, and there's a line in it that just goes, like, something like. And I'll butcher it. So people should listen to the real thing. But he literally says something like, every few days, if I. I check in with myself and I ask myself, I look in the mirror, like, am I doing what I want to do? If this was my last day, and if after three or four days the answer isn't this is what I should be doing, then I know I've got something to change. And I'm like, I don't think we can all live like that all the time. I think. I think there's. You know, people have responsibilities and pressures and whatever, but I think there's truth to the idea of. Did you call the person that you would call if it was your last day? Did you talk to your partner in the way you would if it was the last time you were going to talk to them? Did you look at your kid before you went out to work in a way that you would want them to know was how much you loved them? Like, I think all those things do matter. That applies. Even if you've got to go to a job every day and you've got to say hello to people, it's like, did you behave with everyone in the way that you want to be remembered? I think that is important to me. And I think it's streamlining. I think it's focusing. I think it's all those things, but really it's more about. It's less about what I do, and it's more about who I am in. In that. What is the spirit of my being. I've noticed versions of that where, like, in order to become successful, I've had to be more technical, I've had to be more strategic. I' to be more organized, I've had to be whatever. Whatever the words are. And then I go, I'm just a guy who loves the heart. Like, I'm. That's who I am at the core of, Like, I'm just a guy who just wants to, like, love and be loved. Like, that's who I am at my essence. And who are the people who can take me back to that in this crazy world where I have to be all these other versions of myself in order to do the thing. People always say, like, what's your favorite place? And I'm like, I'm never looking for my favorite place, I'm looking for my favorite people. Because as long as I'm with my favorite people, it doesn't matter where I am. And so, yeah, yeah. I'm looking for people actively, always.

[Riz Ahmed]

Yeah.

[Jay Shetty]

That keep taking me back to that place within my heart and can do it quicker, more beautifully, more gracefully, more elegantly. And I find I'm. Some of them are old friends that I've had for 20, 25 years. Yeah. And some of them are new people that I just met last year.

[Riz Ahmed]

People who can make you more yourself. Yeah, yeah, yeah. People can make you forget yourself.

[Jay Shetty]

Yeah.

[Riz Ahmed]

People who go beyond the performance of your.

[Jay Shetty]

Yeah, yeah. Like the person who's not getting you to play up to your avatar or your. You know what. And so I'm looking. I'm always looking to get. Not collectors. And there's. I don't need a million of those people, but you got to find a few people that. Yeah, you just drop in, your nervous system calms down. You know, the active mind switches are so important.

[Riz Ahmed]

So important. It's interesting you say that because, like, you know, we're in LA right now and I've had a very kind of like. Like, you're making me think about this because I. I had this narrative where I was like, I don't like la. And you're actually making me think about this is like, there are periods of time when I've adored la. And the thing that was surprising to me now is just before coming here, I was like, oh, I gotta go to la. Man. Being from London, like, Like walking, you know, I don't like driving and everything. Spread out. And I was like, you don't see anyone. And all these kind of cliched criticisms.

[Jay Shetty]

Right.

[Riz Ahmed]

And yet I woken up today in la, absolutely loving it, because with my wife, with my kid, I'm with family, you know, family has come to visit, the house is full, and it's suddenly like, Being back as a kid, surrounded by clapping aunties or whatever, you know what I mean? It was just. It just feels like that environment. It feels like home. Absolutely. It's the people, man. It's the people that made the place 100%. And yeah, I was kind of confronted with that realization this morning. I was like, oh, yeah, I've just slipped into this kind of lazy narrative. It's like, it's not what it's about.

[Jay Shetty]

Yeah. And the timepiece too, that you brought up that I think is a really valuable thing is like, how much can I not try and fill time and how much can I not try and be distracted?

[Riz Ahmed]

I find it hard, like kind of doing nothing.

[Jay Shetty]

Yeah.

[Riz Ahmed]

Something that is starting to help is reading. I'm very poorly read.

[Jay Shetty]

No, I don't believe that.

[Riz Ahmed]

Really? Yeah, I kind of like, through your

[Jay Shetty]

work, I would like, I pick up

[Riz Ahmed]

a lot of things in, like, I listen to a lot of music, I listen to podcasts, I watch talks, I go to talks, I talk to people. But I had like, growing up crazy adhd and I'd get into a lot of trouble at school. Now I look back, I'm like, oh, of course that's what that was. And you know, there's loads of different ways in which that manifests. So sitting down to read a book was like torture. It was historically, again, the narrative. Oh, I don't read. I can't read. Recently, particularly being married to a novelist, that was like, this is a bit of a deal breaker. You need to be reading books. At least read my book. It's like, okay, I gotta sit down and do this. That is the thing that is allowing me to like, sit and kind of do nothing again. It's forgetting myself, you know what I mean?

[Jay Shetty]

But I otherwise struggle with it.

[Riz Ahmed]

I can very easily fill time, create a new idea. Now let's progress it. What if we do that? What if we. And I'm sure I don't know. How do you manage that? Is that something that you're also navigate.

[Jay Shetty]

I had to set rules around it because I'm like that as well. I feel like I'm a creative brain. I like. I like building stuff, I like playing with stuff. But I had to start just building real parameters around that. Where.

[Riz Ahmed]

What do you mean? Like, as in you don't work after 6pm?

[Jay Shetty]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's like I won't think about work or be on my phone after 6pm because to me, that rest and renewal is where the best ideas come out. Talking about flow state, I can't invent flow. I can't engineer it, I can't manufacture it. And so for it to exist, I need to be in this lucid state where Riz said something that randomly allowed for me to be inspired at 8pm and it came up and that's fine. But I don't need to act on it immediately. I just need to let it breathe and let it sit.

[Riz Ahmed]

Letting it sit. Best ideas come on. The toilet seat, bro. In the shower. Actually, we started taking our phones to the toilets. The toilets. Now, not the creative mecca used to be, but the shower, man. Shower is always where you go. Yeah. And actually just to give LA its flowers. Driving has been great for me.

[Jay Shetty]

I agree.

[Riz Ahmed]

In that sense, when you're just going on these long drives and you allow the thing to bubble up. David lynch to talk about the fish, right? These fish that would just swim to the surface sometimes if you could just allow the water to be still enough.

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[Riz Ahmed]

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[Jay Shetty]

Yep.

[Riz Ahmed]

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[Jay Shetty]

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[Riz Ahmed]

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[Jay Shetty]

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[Riz Ahmed]

[e-mail] be unique, not anyone else.

[Jay Shetty]

Express it now. Just pop yourself.

[Cindy Crawford]

That's funko.com.

[Jay Shetty]

Riz, I want to do a set of questions for you that we got that speak about everything we've been talking about. But we're going to do them as. Not rapid fire, but we're going to do them as quicker Fire. Yeah, quicker. Yeah.

[Riz Ahmed]

Not like rambly fire.

[Jay Shetty]

I don't want. No, no, no. You can give longer answers, but I want to kind of get some out. So what's the hardest mask you've had to take off?

[Riz Ahmed]

I think it was probably around my health. Yeah. You know, kind of letting people into that even it was happening. I was trying to keep people at a distance. I didn't want people to see me like that.

[Jay Shetty]

Yeah.

[Riz Ahmed]

Particularly if I thought I was like, if I might die, then I don't want people to remember me like this almost, you know? So I. I think it was that. I think it was when I was at my most vulnerable, letting people in on what was happening and starting to slowly share that.

[Jay Shetty]

What part of you still feels like it doesn't belong?

[Riz Ahmed]

Different parts of me in every place that I go to.

[Jay Shetty]

That's interesting. Yeah.

[Riz Ahmed]

And I think a lot of people feel like that. A lot of creative people feel like that. I've learned to embrace that, actually. I actually feel like having that slight outsider's perspective is. Can be kind of fun.

[Jay Shetty]

Yeah.

[Riz Ahmed]

It allows me to, like, enjoy things at a distance as well.

[Jay Shetty]

But.

[Riz Ahmed]

Yeah, I mean, all the time. I mean, you know, I remember going to meet the Queen and accidentally trying to fist bump her.

[Jay Shetty]

That's so good.

[Riz Ahmed]

It was like a British film industry reception. Everyone lines up. She put her hand out like this. From the angle that I was at, I thought she was going like this. I went like this. The security went like this and ended up just going like this, you know. It was super weird.

[Jay Shetty]

Yeah.

[Riz Ahmed]

A ring. So. I don't know, man. Like, there's. This is all these kind of moments of feeling like a fish out of water that now I actually kind of like. I quite enjoy being like, where am I? What is this? You know, it's something you can laugh about later.

[Jay Shetty]

Yeah. It's a better story too.

[Riz Ahmed]

I think so. Yeah. If you felt totally comfortable everywhere you went, then you're probably not in the right place. David Bowie says this thing of. Is when you can't feel the bottom of the swimming pool is. You know, you're in the right place. You know, you're slightly out of your depth working out.

[Jay Shetty]

That's beautiful. I love that. That's. That's one of the reasons why I've. I actually like living in LA because I'm reminded of my insignificance daily.

[Riz Ahmed]

Because it's so big.

[Jay Shetty]

Because it's so big. And I go to. I'm the least important person in the room. And I love it because the only conversation I'll have is a really meaningful one because the only person who's aware of me is someone who's connected to the kind of work I do.

[Riz Ahmed]

Wow.

[Jay Shetty]

And then that allows me to bask in the glory of the rarity of that human and the interaction we just had. So I tried to belong to one person than belong to a room or a place or a space. Because belonging to one person is kind of all we're looking for anyway. It's like when you meet one person and you go, go, oh, God. We even, like, you know, we're from the same area. Like, you know, we know the same people. Like that, to me in a busy, big room is like pure joy that I know. Even the person winning an award on stage, as you've rightly just said, isn't even feeling.

[Riz Ahmed]

Yeah.

[Jay Shetty]

And so it's not being celebrated that make gives us joy. It's not belonging to a whole room that gives us joy. It's connection. It's just one person that looks at you and you go, we're from the same place. We believe in the same things.

[Riz Ahmed]

We care about.

[Jay Shetty]

Whatever. Whatever that may be. Or I had a really good debate with someone that. That engaged me in a really curious way. And we don't agree.

[Riz Ahmed]

It can be so overwhelming in those rooms, can't it? Where, like, you're chatting to people and you feel everyone's, like, looking over your shoulders, see if there's someone else to talk to. And it's like pinball. It's like social pinball. But finding a center in those rooms. Finding a kind of a rooted place to drop into. Yeah. That's the way to do it. Yeah.

[Jay Shetty]

I always. I always say to God, I'm like, I just want to meet the one person you want me to meet today. And that's how I walk into a room.

[Riz Ahmed]

I love it.

[Jay Shetty]

And I always meet that person. And it's always like, Becomes a friendship. Or. Or we had a great conversation and we don't talk ever again. Or. And it's just like, yeah, God, like, I'm here for you. So you just introduced me to the one person you want to introduce me to.

[Riz Ahmed]

Beautiful.

[Jay Shetty]

And it. Yeah, that. That kind of carries me. So this one's a good one. So when was the last time you tried to. People, please.

[Riz Ahmed]

This is gonna sound like a small thing, but clothes matter to Me a lot.

[Jay Shetty]

Me too, man.

[Riz Ahmed]

I grew up near Wembley Market where they sold all the fake designer clothes.

[Jay Shetty]

Yeah.

[Riz Ahmed]

So it's all about that. We go and buy some and we sell them and then we go, you know, and try and buy some real ones. And I don't know, we were just kind of obsessed with it, you know, as teenagers trying to wear the mask or have the costume or find worth whatever it is. Now I see it more as a kind of expression of myself. Recently, I was gonna do a talk show or something and I said I shouldn't wear that outfit. That's too me in a weird way. Wow. I was like, that's. I need to meet the audience where they're at. Yeah. Maybe they haven't seen a show like this or have related to someone like me from my background. I'm doing something, maybe Target like, you know, it's middle America or something. And I was, I tried to dilute down what I would wear and who I would be. And luckily when I was wearing thing, I was like, who the hell is this?

[Jay Shetty]

What am I? What am I doing?

[Riz Ahmed]

And I took it off. But I remember, and I remember actually in that moment being quite surprised. I was like, oh, that's still really. That's just still a really strong instinct in me. Yeah. To do that, to edit and censor myself in that way. Sounds like a small thing.

[Jay Shetty]

But do you think though, you only get away with being able to make that choice when you're successful?

[Riz Ahmed]

I think chicken and egg. I think the people who become most successful, the people who are most unapologetically themselves.

[Jay Shetty]

I love that. What a great answer. Yeah.

[Riz Ahmed]

Because the specificity and the honesty and the authenticity is what people are attracted to just feels real, you know, that's the narrative again.

[Jay Shetty]

We tell ourselves, oh, when I'm successful, then I'll be myself.

[Riz Ahmed]

When people accept me, I'll be me. Or if you be you, then people will accept you.

[Jay Shetty]

Yeah, yeah. So well said, man. So well said. I feel like before we go to the final five, which is our rapid fire, I feel like we have to give a bunch of shout outs to places in north and northwest London that we grew up around because we've got to go niche. We were talking about this before. We were like, we could have done a whole interview about north northwest London and no one else would have got us apart from our hometown, which we love.

[Riz Ahmed]

So this is for the 15 people that know exactly what we're talking about.

[Jay Shetty]

I'm going to start with what I said to you earlier, Kebab is on Healing Road. Yeah.

[Riz Ahmed]

Kebab ish is literally a place that I shout out on my last rap song.

[Jay Shetty]

Do you know what? When I said that to you earlier, I didn't even know that.

[Riz Ahmed]

I just did a track called We Good with Cassis that it's on the Bait soundtrack. Actually, I name check Kababish specifically. And the amount of people from my past who reached out and texted me, like, bro, kebabish. You remember those days when we used to go kebabish the garlic mayo? My mouth is watering as I'm talking. It's actually the naan. It's the freshness of the naan one. Shout out Kebabish. Ealing Road. Yeah, okay. Yeah, that's a good one. What about. Were you Saint Anne's or Saint George's? These are two shopping malls in Harrow in northwest London, right? Yeah.

[Jay Shetty]

Whichever one the girl I was dating wanted to go to. Yeah. I was like, whichever.

[Riz Ahmed]

All right, so that's a good one.

[Jay Shetty]

Yeah, that's a great one.

[Riz Ahmed]

I was actually saying again to shout out this area in London. It says northwest London. We have all the best Jays. We have Jay Sean, Jay Paul and Jay Shetty. And this is the Holy Trinity, man. It's the holy Brown Trinity.

[Jay Shetty]

And then we have Riz and Dead Patel.

[Riz Ahmed]

Yes. We're also there holding down a Fort Rainer's Lane, Sudbury town. So. But it's interesting. It's this kind of little pocket corner of the world. There's. There's super multicultural. You know, because of that, I think it's like a real creative hotbed and you get some interesting stuff happening there.

[Jay Shetty]

Yeah. Anthony Joshua from Watford. Exactly.

[Riz Ahmed]

He's from Watford, aj. Yeah, exactly.

[Jay Shetty]

Sitting down with you is like. It is sitting down with an old friend. Like, it feels that way because the schools you went to, the people you grew up around, friends and family. But, Riz, you've been amazing to talk to today.

[Riz Ahmed]

Honestly, this is an absolute honor to

[Jay Shetty]

be talking to you. Been beyond my expectations to get your openness, your honesty, your vulnerability. The show Bait is a winner already. Can't wait for more people to watch it. I can't wait for you. I mean, I know you got Digger coming out this year. You've got, you know, Hamlet that's out already. Like, it's. I feel like, you know, just keeps becoming more and more your year for actually putting out real expression.

[Riz Ahmed]

Thank you, brother.

[Jay Shetty]

True. I appreciate.

[Riz Ahmed]

I'm trying to receive it. There we go.

[Jay Shetty]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Thank you.

[Riz Ahmed]

Appreciate you.

[Jay Shetty]

But Riz, we end every interview. The final five. These questions have to be answered in one sentence maximum.

[Riz Ahmed]

Oh, God, here we go.

[Jay Shetty]

So, Riz, these are your final five, brought to you by State Farm. The first question is, what is the best advice you've ever heard or received?

[Riz Ahmed]

Idris Elba once said to me, categorize yourself, not

[Jay Shetty]

explain.

[Riz Ahmed]

I'd hit a glass ceiling in my career in the uk. He was like, you should go to America. I'm like, bro, what are they going to do with a guy like me over there? They don't do nothing. I'm this. They don't have that. They have that. I'm not this. And he went, categorize yourself, not my friend. And actually, when you do that, you're doing other people's work for them. It's about the limitations people place on you, how we internalize them and then we perpetuate that narrative. And going on this, this is my lane. I'm this flavor. There's so many different sides to who you are. I told him that recently and he was like. I was like, bro, do you remember that conversation? He was like, nah, no memory of that whatsoever. I was like, great, Thanks a lot, bro. But it's those throwaway moments, right, when people kind of like, see you differently to how you used to be seen.

[Jay Shetty]

Did you feel that? Like, was that hard? I know the representation conversations overplayed. I know those conversations have happened of just like, you know, making it as a brown man in Hollywood.

[Riz Ahmed]

You've.

[Jay Shetty]

You've done that. But what is the reality of that? Because we say that, and then you're like, well, wait a minute. Actually, no, I haven't done that.

[Riz Ahmed]

Because I think that there's a reality that for women, for people of color, for people who are differently abled, there is a lot more resistance. I definitely do feel like sometimes I have to work, you know, twice as hard to get half as far. But I'm also kind of starting to feel like that is gives my journey more meaning to me. But I know for a fact also for many others, you know, and that actually I think more and more friction is what gives life its meaning. You know, you order amino deliveroo, it does not taste the same as you've taken that time to cook that for yourself. Shout out, deliveroo. I'm not saying that I don't do that, but I'm just kind of like. I just feel like it's what's given my journey. It's, it's. It's meaning for, for me, and I know for others So I wouldn't. I wouldn't change it. I think for a long time I'd say, I wish I could swap that out, wish I could make that different, But I don't feel that way anymore.

[Jay Shetty]

What advice would you give to someone who is a person of color, differently abled, who is a woman agenda that may have any of these experiences? What would you say to them? Because I think the bitterness, the pain, the rejection.

[Riz Ahmed]

Real is real. Yeah, it's real. It's justified. It's not imagined. I don't want to gaslight anyone who's going through that. It's hard. I would say, you know, my experience is like the gift and the curse are usually the same thing. You losing your voice has made you so conscious of what you're communicating and how and the words you're choosing. There's so many examples I can think of in my own journey where the thing that I thought was blocking me, if I just lean into it, it could unlock something. And I would say to all of those people, the thing about you that's different is an obstacle in certain ways, but it's also the key. And I would say lean into the specificity of your experience of who you are. You know, I went to Oxford University and felt very out of place there on many different levels. And my experience there taught me something, which is actually because I was thinking about quitting after the first month. I was like, what the hell am I doing here? Kind of had a mental health kind of breakdown almost over there and felt super depressed, super. Kind of like an alien. But I kind of feel like now the place where you stick out, if you can. If you can find a support if it doesn't hurt you, the place that you stick out is a place where you should kind of stick it out. You have an opportunity of changing the temperature in that room, of bringing other people into that room.

[Jay Shetty]

I love that, man. Yeah. It reminds me of the stoic statement of the obstacle is the way.

[Riz Ahmed]

Oh, wow.

[Jay Shetty]

Idea of, like, the obstacle is the way. There is. There is no other way. And so that obstacle, whether it's how you're set up or your background or your uniqueness.

[Riz Ahmed]

Yeah.

[Jay Shetty]

All right, question number two. What is the worst advice you've ever heard or received?

[Riz Ahmed]

Was one of the first casting directors I ever met said, hey, nice to meet you. Just be careful about your eyes. You can look like a bit of a psychopath sometimes because I do this, I get excited and I start going like this. I just want to watch this interview back going, I Did it there, I did it there. Sometimes I say to my wife, I go, am I doing the crazy eyes? She goes, stop, think. Don't think about the crazy eyes. Okay. But it just made me very self conscious. And actually, weirdly, I remember for a couple of years after that I was acting like this and everything. Go and watch some of my stuff from like the early aughts, bro. I'm like, that's brilliant.

[Jay Shetty]

That's so good.

[Riz Ahmed]

I have big eyes. I can be. Get animated. It's. I've got to, you know, learn to try and lean into that.

[Jay Shetty]

Yeah, yeah, I love that. Question number three. You mentioned your wife a few times. What's been the biggest lesson that you've learned from your wife?

[Riz Ahmed]

When I see the path that my wife has been on, how she's had to fight every step of the way, the dedication, the devotion it has taken for her to tell her story with such specificity and reach the world with it, I think I've kind of understood what devotion means. Devotion to her path, her creativity is a kind of. Of prayer, is a kind of devotion. Devotion. And seeing how she is with our child, I think she just operates from like a deep place, you know, I think the biggest thing she's taught me that. And also, you can never buy enough phone chargers. She will take them all and lose them all.

[Jay Shetty]

Yeah.

[Riz Ahmed]

You know, they say is the way that the first thing about someone that you find cute ends up being the thing that's like, kill me now. We actually met because she had lost her phone charger. No, I was in a cafe in New York. A laptop charger. I was in a cafe in New York just writing a script or whatever. She came in on the phone. Laptops only on the communal table. She sits down opposite me, pulls out her laptop, starts emptying out her bag, looking for her charger. It's like chaos. And I was like, can I. Can I help you? Do you want to borrow my charger? After six years of marriage, bro, that hasn't changed. She's still borrowing my charger. Now I'm trying to hide the charger from her. That's always that first.

[Jay Shetty]

Did she know? She was like, was that.

[Riz Ahmed]

No, no. I might have thought that maybe for a minute. Now that I know her, I just know it's like a vortex of charges. No, but look, I'm. I'm just kind of trying to downplay it and joke around, but I think, you know, my wife has taught me so much, but the word that comes to my mind is devotion. Devotion to A purpose to a journey. Yeah, to your path.

[Jay Shetty]

I love that, man. Beautiful answer. Question number four. What do you pray to God for today?

[Riz Ahmed]

I went to Mecca recently and you do this thing where you kind of try and pray for everyone you know by name. And I started realizing that everything ends up kind of cohering around like three basic ideas. I pray for people's health. I pray for people's ability to provide for themselves and their loved ones in a way that allows them to have dignity and feel good about it. And the third thing that I always pray for everyone is, is for them to be brought closer to their purpose. And I always say, God, bring me close to my purpose, because that's a way of bringing me closer to myself. As you intend to, and also closer to you, your purpose. I think your path is something that is extremely personal, but also divine. And so alignment to our path, to our purpose. There's this phrase in Islam, the Sirat al Mustrin, which is the straight path. And people interpret that in different ways, but for me, it's about finding your path, the path that's intended for you. So, yeah, man, your health, your Rosie Roti, your ability to provide and your path.

[Jay Shetty]

I love that. Have you been to Mecca before? Is that the first time?

[Riz Ahmed]

No, I went once when I was 15, but it was different experience. I went older and actually, you know, from a more spiritually skeptical place. You know how life throws you around and you kind of ask questions. And we went this December and both me and my wife were. Went with openness. And I would say, you know, we are Muslim and we have spirituality in our lives, but we also feel often that organized religion and the way that is used, it's definitely brought some skepticism into our hearts as well. And going there was incredible. And I would say it was actually just a physical act of walking around in a circle with all these people from all over the world, everyone dressed the same, everyone's mask kind of stripped away. There's just such a sense of oneness there. It was really kind of beautiful. And I promised myself I've got try and bottle this feeling. But of course, as soon as you're on that plane, you're like back on your phone. But that was.

[Jay Shetty]

It was powerful.

[Riz Ahmed]

Yeah.

[Jay Shetty]

It's interesting as you were talking about that, because I've been thinking about this idea a lot about how modern society has made everything about upwards and forwards. And actually when you look at spiritual traditions, everything's circumambulating beautiful. And even in India, when you go to a holy place, You. You circle it.

[Riz Ahmed]

Or in a wedding, when you walk around the fire seven times, everything circle.

[Jay Shetty]

And so when you start looking at life that way versus that way, I love it. It's just a fascinating, like, mindset shift of like, oh, what if we saw life as cyclical and not as linear? And everything we just talked about today.

[Riz Ahmed]

I love what you're saying. I think of it as a spiral.

[Jay Shetty]

A spiral. Yeah.

[Riz Ahmed]

Yeah, right.

[Jay Shetty]

Yeah.

[Riz Ahmed]

Because you kind of retread the same ground in life, but hopefully from a more elevated perspective each time.

[Jay Shetty]

I like that.

[Riz Ahmed]

You know, and epiphany kind of works in that way as well. And those leaps that you have of understanding, I. They usually kind of. Not by going to. By retracing your steps.

[Jay Shetty]

Yeah.

[Riz Ahmed]

And feeling different or wanting something different to feel different.

[Jay Shetty]

I like the ascension aspect that you just added. That's not just round, round, round. It's.

[Riz Ahmed]

It's showing up.

[Jay Shetty]

So there is some ascension, which is. Which is beautiful. Fifth and final question. We ask this to every guest who's ever been on the show. I'm really excited for your answer, actually. You can think about it for as long as you want. If you could create one law that everyone in the world had to follow, what would it be?

[Riz Ahmed]

I want to be off my phone more. But we're all locked in because everyone's on their phone. Phone. I'll put it down if everyone else does. I just want everyone to be off their phone. Everyone to go back to dumb phones. And. And here's why that I go through periods of time where I put my phone away. Totally. I put it in a little safe and I lock it away for like 12 hours or 20 hours or. You know, before we had a kid, me and my wife would go away. And she. As a novelist, she has to do that kind of deep work, you know, you can't kind of dip in and out of it. It. The way she does it. At least she can't. And so the phone would go away for, like, five days. We'd, like, check into a hotel, give it to them, and say, we'll take this when we check out. Time feels totally different. My experience of the day feels totally different. The thoughts in my mind are totally different. I'm a little bit closer to being obsessed with the Velcro on the shoe again. You know what I mean? Yeah. I would love to just do that. I don't know what that means about this show, though, Jay. And who gets to see it. Maybe we'll have certain. Just certain hours in the day. Yeah, yeah, we can all go back.

[Jay Shetty]

No, that's a great answer. I love it. I feel like that's, that's, that's the crux of it all. Riz Ahmed Bait. Excited for everything that comes from this day. I hope we stay in touch.

[Riz Ahmed]

Yeah, man.

[Jay Shetty]

It's been such a joy to do this with you and I hope you felt you got to share everything and anything you wanted to talk about.

[Riz Ahmed]

Absolutely. And thank you for creating the space for me and for other people. It's a very enriching space and it empowering one where we can just be vulnerable in that way and share. So thank you.

[Jay Shetty]

Thank you, man. Thank you. If you're feeling inspired by this episode, you won't want to miss my conversation with wicked's Cynthia Erivo.

[Riz Ahmed]

We are afraid to let a person go and we need to be okay

[Jay Shetty]

with letting people go.

[Riz Ahmed]

We don't know what path people are walking on when they walk into our lives. We might just be a stepping stone in their path, just like stepping stones in their life.

[Jay Shetty]

I'm U.S. transportation Secretary Sean Duffy. The sound of a seatbelt. It's one of the most important sounds in our car. It means everyone is ready and everyone is safe. Make it a priority. Buckle up every time. Hear the sound. Make it a habit. Paid for by nhtsa. What's up cousin?

[Riz Ahmed]

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[Jay Shetty]

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[Riz Ahmed]

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[Jay Shetty]

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[Riz Ahmed]

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