Riz Ahmed was multitasking. It was February in London, and the actor was doing an interview with a men\u2019s magazine en route to collect his kid from school. So far, so starry. \u201cHere\u2019s the reality,\u201d says Ahmed today, palms slamming down hard on the table. \u201cI\u2019m late for the school run. I\u2019m stuck in traffic. I\u2019m meant to be at my laptop, but I\u2019m having to do it on my phone, in my car. I\u2019m double parked on a double yellow line, doing the interview, looking over my shoulder. The traffic warden\u2019s coming, it\u2019s rush hour. He tries to move me along. I try to get out of there while I\u2019m talking on the phone to this guy.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Guardian\u2019s journalism is independent. We will earn a commission if you buy something through an affiliate link.\u00a0Learn more<\/a>.<\/p>\n Distracted, Ahmed hit another car. The driver jumped out of his vehicle, incensed. \u201cHe\u2019s like, \u2018What the fuck are you doing?!\u2019\u201d says Ahmed, who had been attempting to continue the interview. \u201cI\u2019m now going off video, like, \u2018Oh, my signal\u2019s a bit bad!\u2019 while going on and off mute negotiating car insurance details. On the phone, I\u2019m going, \u2018Absolutely, it was just such an honour getting to tell my story with these amazing collaborators,\u2019\u201d he says, his voice lowering an octave and turning smooth.<\/p>\n He muted the call and wound down the window. \u201cTake my licence plate, bro!\u201d he yells, accent reverting to born-and-raised\u2013in-Wembley. \u201cI\u2019m not trying to fight you! Take my details, please!\u201d<\/p>\n Ahmed attempted to explain that he was in the middle of an interview, but the driver was having none of it. \u201cHe goes, \u2018You drive like that? I hope you don\u2019t get the job.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Ahmed bursts out laughing. That day, he says, he felt the gap between the persona he needed to perform and the person he really is. It\u2019s a familiar feeling for one of Britain\u2019s most versatile actors. The film version of Hamlet<\/a> he developed, which came out in February, elegantly reimagines the grieving prince as the son of a wealthy south Asian property mogul in modern-day London, and sees Ahmed appear as the titular lead in full Shakespearean verse. Later this year, he\u2019ll star alongside Tom Cruise in Digger, the new Alejandro Gonz\u00e1lez I\u00f1\u00e1rritu film. A youthful 43, Ahmed\u2019s particular mix of intensity, soulfulness and wit have even put him in the James Bond conversation, were the franchise willing to take a punt on a 007 who happened not to be white.<\/p>\n And that also happens to be the premise of Bait, the madcap TV comedy show Ahmed is about to release on Prime Video after developing it for the best part of 10 years. Ahmed plays Shah Latif, a struggling actor who bungles his Bond audition but somehow ends up in the running for the role. It\u2019s the opportunity of a lifetime, and not just for Shah. His cousin Zulfi (a brilliant Guz Khan) sees it as a way to promote his new minicab business, Muber (\u201cBut Uber in London is already Muslim,\u201d quips Shah), and his mum (played by Bollywood actor Sheeba Chaddha) might finally have something to brag about.<\/p>\n With Guz Khan in new show Bait. Ahmed plays a struggling actor in the running for the role of James Bond. Photograph: Amazon MGM Studios<\/p>\n When we meet on a sunny Monday afternoon in east London, Ahmed is casual and comfy in black sweats, grey T-shirt and a burgundy jacket from Indian designer brand Kartik Research. Slung across the bench we\u2019re sitting at is a beat-up 1950s aviator jacket from Front General Store, his favourite vintage shop in New York. In person, Ahmed laughs easily and listens closely, his gaze intense.<\/p>\n I\u2019m interested in his choice to open his TV show with an audition. In an essay about being typecast<\/a> as a terrorist that he wrote in 2016, Ahmed compared the airport interrogation rooms where he had frequently been stopped to audition rooms. \u201cThey are also places where you are reduced to your marketability or threat-level, where the length of your facial hair can be a deal-breaker, where you are seen, and hence see yourself, in reductive labels,\u201d he wrote. In Bait, Shah feels limited by his various roles, destined to perform different versions of himself to the people in his life.<\/p>\n \u201cWow, this is like therapy,\u201d says Ahmed playfully. \u201cYou\u2019re joining dots I\u2019d never even thought to! Send me the invoice after, yeah?\u201d<\/p>\n double quotation markEven people who aren\u2019t performers, we all have to perform in some sense or another, right?<\/p>\n Bait, he says more seriously, is about how life can feel like one big audition. \u201cI hope that\u2019s relatable to people outside of just actors,\u201d he clarifies. \u201cEven people who aren\u2019t performers, we all have to perform in some sense or another, right?\u201d Ahmed reels off his thesis. \u201cWe\u2019re all projecting this version of ourselves that\u2019s usually quite different to who we really are, or how we really feel, in order to prove to people that we\u2019re enough.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s maybe been exacerbated by the age we live in, and social media. We\u2019re made to feel as though we have to reassert our importance, our relevance, our likability, our very existence. Social media has rewired our brains in such a way where we\u2019re all having to do that.\u201d<\/p>\n Composite: Rosaline Shahnavaz\/The Guardian<\/p>\n Ahmed has spent two decades proving his skill and range as an actor. His filmography spans satirical comedies and westerns, sci-fi and sensitive, culturally specific dramas. I ask him to describe the different eras of his career. His eyebrows narrow. \u201cI really hoped I\u00a0wouldn\u2019t have to,\u201d he says with mock seriousness. \u201cCan you do it?\u201d he teases.<\/p>\n Well, first, there were the breakout years, where he played with Muslim stereotypes post-9\/11, with films such as his 2006 debut The Road to Guant\u00e1namo, Shifty<\/a>, in the role of a drug dealer, and Chris Morris\u2019s cult comedy Four Lions<\/a>, about a quartet of lovable, incompetent jihadists.<\/p>\n His Hollywood era began with a supporting role in the Jake Gyllenhaal thriller Nightcrawler<\/a> and led to a high-profile gig as a tortured taxi driver and murder suspect in HBO\u2019s 2016 TV crime drama The Night Of, which won him <\/a>an Emmy. Around the same time he did\u00a0Rogue One: A\u00a0 Star Wars Story<\/a> and Marvel\u2019s Venom<\/a>, as well as an underrated cameo as a surf instructor love\u00a0interest in Lena Dunham\u2019s Girls (look up the clip of him rapping Twista\u2019s verse from Kanye West\u2019s Slow Jamz). What\u2019s obvious is that Ahmed has never wanted to be, or do, one thing. \u201cI\u00a0made a very deliberate choice to do Four Lions and Sound of Metal<\/a>, to do Nightcrawler and\u00a0The Night Of,\u201d he says. \u201cThat\u2019s due to my own\u00a0restlessness.\u201d<\/p>\n More recently, the actor has been interested in telling stories from his own distinctive point of view. In 2020, he co-wrote, produced and starred in Mogul Mowgli<\/a>, about a British Pakistani rapper suffering a mysterious chronic illness, and in 2022 he and Aneil Karia won an Oscar for their sobering short film The Long Goodbye, which sees an ordinary south Asian family preparing for a wedding when their home is violently raided by police. The pair made the London-set Hamlet together, which Ahmed describes as a 15-year labour of love. \u201cHopefully you\u2019ll get an era 1774093208 where I get things made a bit quicker, now I\u2019ve got my head around how you do it.\u201d<\/p>\n In 2015, when the Hollywood Reporter announced the cast for Rogue One, Ahmed\u2019s phone started blowing up. \u201cPeople were texting me like, \u2018Brooooo! Oh my God!\u2019\u201d he remembers. Yet the following day, he says, \u201cI got banned from Tesco for suspected shoplifting.\u201d His washing machine had broken, he explains. Fresh out of clean clothes and on his way to the launderette, he\u2019d popped into the supermarket to buy his brother a birthday cake. \u201cI was in fluorescent cycle shorts, a massive green padded jacket and, like, a string vest from carnival or something. You know those checkered tartan laundry bags? You know the exact ones I mean?\u201d I know the ones, I tell him. \u201cI\u2019m just dragging it in.<\/p>\n Wearing a Honey Monster outfit in cult comedy Four Lions In 2019\u2019s Sound of Metal, playing a drummer who begins to lose his hearing. Photograph: Courtesy of Amazon Studios\/AP<\/p>\n \u201cI bought him a pizza instead of a cake, because they didn\u2019t have any good cakes there \u2013 don\u2019t judge me. I\u00a0didn\u2019t check it out properly on the self-checkout, the alarm went off, I look like a crazy person, and I\u2019ve got, like, a pizza buried underneath piles of dirty underwear and socks.\u201d Ahmed delivers this story like it\u2019s a well-practised part of a standup routine; I suspect he may have told it before.<\/p>\n Throughout our conversation, Ahmed is keen to impress that just like everybody else, he too is \u201cchaotic, fucked up, vulnerable, hilarious and messy\u201d. But the gulf between Ahmed\u2019s impressive public self and the chaotic version behind the scenes has been widening for some time. \u201cIt became so big and so stressful that it became absurd, and quite funny. And so I started writing these things down.\u201d<\/p>\n He noted down awkward moments such as being mistaken for the actor Dev Patel (\u201cit happened again in a black cab last week\u201d) and almost fist-bumping the late queen. \u201cI\u2019ve always been a fan of comedy from stress,\u201d he says. \u201cI\u2019ve always been able to see the funny side of it whilst I\u2019ve been in these incongruous situations. As I started writing about it from a more and more personal place, I realised how universal that feeling is.\u201d<\/p>\n double quotation markWith standup, the gloves are off, man \u2026 You live or die. There\u2019s no fourth wall. It\u2019s about truth, honesty, connection, performance <\/p>\n Ahmed is a naturally gifted comedian, with a lean, wiry physicality and impeccable comic timing. Yet his more recent, and more lauded, roles have skewed serious rather than funny. \u201cOf course, the dream is to be a standup comedian, but everyone who knows me says, \u2018Please don\u2019t do that,\u2019\u201d he says, breaking into a pleading whisper. Comedy<\/a>, he insists, is the purest kind of performance. \u201cI see people like Hasan Minhaj or Ramy [Youssef], or Bill Hicks growing up, or Chris Rock, and the gloves are off, man. You live or die. There\u2019s no fourth wall. There\u2019s no politeness from the audience, it\u2019s that moment to moment.\u201d He snaps his fingers. \u201cIt\u2019s about truth, honesty, connection, performance. I mean, there\u2019s a reason why my first ever rap song was a comedy rap song.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cHi kids, welcome to fun-fun-fundamentalist \/ In the breaks, Nike\u2019s advertising bomb-proof kicks \/ They\u2019re even showing Bin Laden\u2019s cave on Cribs!\u201d he rapped gleefully, as Riz MC, on Post 9\/11 Blues<\/a>, released back in 2006. It caught the attention of Chris Morris, who went on to cast him in Four Lions.<\/p>\n At school, Ahmed says his behaviour was \u201cquite ADD\u201d, that he was bored, restless and disruptive. He was frequently sent out of class for making the other students laugh. The boys he grew up with were his brother\u2019s age, so three years older than him. The runt of the group, Ahmed\u2019s way of getting noticed was to play the joker. \u201cI had big ears,\u201d he says. \u201cI could do a Prince Charles impression. I remember I would do this,\u201d he says, pulling his ears forward, goofily.<\/p>\n \u201cThe things that were my hobbies became my jobs, right?\u201d he says. \u201cMusic and this acting stuff, and writing and producing, it can kind of grow and grow and not leave a lot of time for other stuff.\u201d Ahmed says he\u2019s OK with that. At this stage in his life, \u201cit\u2019s mainly about spending time with my wife, my kid, my parents, my cousins\u201d.<\/p>\n Photograph: Rosaline Shahnavaz\/The Guardian<\/p>\n In 2020, Ahmed married the American novelist Fatima Farheen Mirza, whom he met in New York while preparing for Sound of Metal (the film for which he would receive an Oscar nomination). They have a toddler together, whose age and gender he doesn\u2019t share. How is he balancing all of the acting, writing and producing with being a dad? \u201cGreat question,\u201d he says, again gently deflecting with humour. \u201cAs my therapist, have you got any solutions for me about how we can work this out?\u201d<\/p>\n Balance, he says, is the biggest question in his life right now. \u201cI think balancing how much you choose to work in one place so we don\u2019t all get uprooted and have to move around the globe \u2026 that\u2019s one question. But I \u00a0guess another question I\u2019ve been thinking about a bit more recently is one of modelling versus presence.\u201d He explains: \u201cThere\u2019s something powerful in just being present with a kid. Not doing anything, just literally spending time breathing the same air, making eye contact, hanging out. And that\u2019s something so nourishing, particularly for kids. That\u2019s what I mean by presence.\u201d At the same time he wants to model for his child what it means to do what you love in a way that aligns with the way you think about the world. An actor friend of his told him they chose not to work when their child was small, and to stay at home. \u201cThey\u2019ve regretted some of those choices,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n Ahmed, who is second-generation Pakistani, has been thinking about the way his own mum and dad parented him. \u201cThey had a lot less resources and choices than I did. I\u00a0think of their labour and love and sacrifice as really heroic.\u201d His dad was a shipping merchant while his mum took care of him, his brother and his sister. \u201cMy father worked on boats for a lot of his life, and so a lot of the time he had to be away.\u201d He was absent for long stretches, sometimes months at a time. Did he miss him? \u201cYeah, massively, of course. Hugely,\u201d he says. \u201cI\u2019m really cognisant of, on the one hand, learning from his example in knowing what it is to sometimes bite the bullet to provide for your family, versus not wanting to retread some of the pitfalls of that. In our adult lives, we\u2019re all trying to climb back into that same treehouse we grew up in and fix it.\u201d<\/p>\n With his wife Fatima Farheen Mirza after he won an Oscar for The Long Goodbye, the sobering short film he made with Aneil Karia. Photograph: George Pimentel\/REX\/ Shutterstock<\/p>\n How often does he see his parents these days? \u201cAll right, Auntie. Jesus Christ! You\u2019ve got me on the hook here. Lemme get my calendar out,\u201d he says, pretend-reaching for his phone. \u201cI try to see them very regularly,\u201d he says. Every week, every month? Ahmed looks at me quizzically. \u201cAre you Asian?\u201d he says, noting my own Punjabi-Sikh heritage. \u201cYou\u2019d have a chappal flying at you through space and time if it was every month.\u201d A\u00a0chappal is a slipper, jokingly deployed by Asian parents of all backgrounds as a form of discipline. \u201cOf course, at least every week. A few times a week.\u201d<\/p>\n Recently, Ahmed has been trying to get better at cooking. His wife, he says, is a really good cook, the sort who can glance at a recipe then improvise. \u201cI think I\u2019m a good cook, but she doesn\u2019t. The problem is, when I cook, I\u2019m the only one who eats it.\u201d What has he been making that she\u2019s turned down? \u201cI made fish curry the other day,\u201d he says. \u201cI thought it was nice. I rate it, I\u2019m trying to back myself. She didn\u2019t think that.\u201d<\/p>\n Photograph: Rosaline Shahnavaz\/The Guardian<\/p>\n Ahmed describes Mirza as \u201ca truly creative person\u201d whose writing \u201cfloors me every day\u201d, though he says they try not to discuss work too much at home. \u201cI\u00a0probably try and hassle her for her opinion on things a lot more than she needs to hassle me for mine on writing. She doesn\u2019t want my GCSE English ideas,\u201d he says, self-deprecatingly.<\/p>\n But while he may wear it lightly, Ahmed\u2019s intellect is no secret. A working-class British Pakistani kid from Wembley who won a scholarship to private school, he got into Oxford to study politics, philosophy and economics, a typically star-making degree favoured by politicians, broadcasters and public intellectuals. He has never felt as if he was a natural fit for the establishment, but has always found a way to navigate it.<\/p>\n \u201cThere is a part of me, and I dare say a part of all of us, that is chasing external validation, and trophies and awards and accolades are obviously a tangible version of that,\u201d he says. But the best part of winning an Oscar was seeing it in his family home. \u201cIt felt really good to be able to show up to my mum\u2019s house and give it to her.\u201d<\/p>\n double quotation markNo matter what position we get to in life, I think harsh words can land harshly<\/p>\n Last month, Ahmed was a presenter at the Baftas, performing a skit on stage with the rapper Little Simz. He was in the room when Tourette campaigner John Davidson involuntarily shouted a racial slur while actors Michael B Jordan and Delroy Lindo were on stage. \u201cIt was a very confusing, awkward, tense, baffling moment for everyone,\u201d he says. What did he make of the way Bafta and the BBC handled it? \u201cNot well. Not well at all.\u201d He adds that he was glad to see that Jordan had since won a Sag award for his film Sinners. \u201cLess because of what these things can mean, but more as a message of respect and solidarity from the creative community,\u201d because \u201cno matter what position we get to in life, I\u00a0think harsh words can land harshly.\u201d<\/p>\n That night, the BBC broadcast also cut the words \u201cFree Palestine\u201d from outstanding debut director Akinola Davies Jr\u2019s winning speech. Ahmed has long been outspoken on the issue, signing an open letter to Keir Starmer before he became prime minister, calling for a halt to arms sales to Israel, and performing at Wembley Stadium as part of the Together for Palestine fundraiser concert. Ahmed\u2019s face is reflective when I ask if he has faced any repercussions in Hollywood for being candid about his political views. \u201cThat thought does cross your mind. I\u2019m sure there\u2019s some people that maybe didn\u2019t like what I\u2019ve said \u2026 But I also just think that in life you have to make choices. And I\u2019m a father, and I want to try and model a way of being in the world that aligns to my values. I don\u2019t think I\u2019m saying anything aggressive or controversial in calling for respect for international law, or human rights, or protection of civilians, women and children, or the Geneva convention,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n He is back on safer ground when talking about film-making. He describes being \u201cblown away\u201d by the Tunisian documentary-maker Kaouther Ben Hania, director of The Voice of Hind Rajab<\/a>, and the most recent film by Jafar Panahi, It Was Just an Accident<\/a>. \u201cWhat they\u2019re about really matters. They were made against the odds, and they\u2019re speaking truth to power in that way. But how they\u2019re playing with form, how they\u2019re innovating with how they\u2019re subverting tone. First and foremost, it\u2019s how they\u2019re doing it,\u201d he says, comparing their artistry to \u201cdoing wheelies\u201d.<\/p>\n Styling: Lewis Munro. Grooming: Charlie Cullen. Styling assistant: Olly Cook. Full look, by Amiri<\/a>. Full look by Burberry<\/a> (panel of three photographs). Flowery coat (middle image), by Kent & Curwen<\/a>. Blue shirt portrait, full look by Givenchy<\/a>. Photograph: Rosaline Shahnavaz\/The Guardian<\/p>\n