About this episode

Riz Ahmed discusses his career, cultural identity, and his new TV series Bait.

For the better part of two decades, Emmy and Oscar-winning actor Riz Ahmed has moved seamlessly between worlds: indies, blockbusters, prestige TV, writing, rapping. We discuss the long road to his new TV series Bait (3:45), what the character of James Bond symbolizes (6:00), and how the show connects to his own 80s upbringing in Wembley, England (18:40). Then, Riz describes how code-switching (inadvertently) led to acting (22:00), the childhood films he first made in his mind (26:25), the piece of advice from Idris Elba that changed his course (38:30), and how he broke out in Hollywood starring opposite Jake Gyllenhaal in Nightcrawler (40:50). On the back-half, Riz talks performing on stage with classmate (now Zeteo journalist) Mehdi Hasan (44:20), a frenetic audition for Slumdog Millionaire (45:28), nightmares from The Night Of (49:25), his upcoming project opposite Tom Cruise (53:45), the Swet Shop Boys’ hit song “Half Moghul Half Mowgli” (1:00:45), how life imitated art while shooting Relay (1:09:05), and the challenge—and freedom—of representing himself, anew, in Bait (1:13:20). Clips from  Bait  courtesy of Prime Video. Subscribe to our  new YouTube channel…

People in this episode

Host: Sam Fragoso

Guest: Riz Ahmed

Topics covered

• acting
• Hollywood
• cultural identity
• TV series
• personal journey
• code-switching

Keywords

• Riz Ahmed
• Bait
• acting
• Hollywood
• cultural identity
• code-switching
• Idris Elba
• Nightcrawler
• Slumdog Millionaire
• Mehdi Hasan

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Prime Video

Books & works: Bait, Nightcrawler, Slumdog Millionaire, The Night Of, Half Moghul Half Mowgli, Relay

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