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What lies beyond the fortress of identity and representation? This is a question I’ve long hoped to ask Riz Ahmed. It’s 10am on a Monday and the Oscar-winning actor and rapper is dialling in from Northern California, where he’s spent most of the past six months. He has been working on a longstanding project, one, he shares that has been close to his heart—a recently announced comedy series picked up by Amazon Prime Video, in which he plays the role of struggling actor Shah Latif. His voice—sharp, raspy, with a gentle lilt—is laced with the remnants of a busy week. Yet, he is characteristically affable and warm.
For the past 18 years, Riz’s career has been steeped in the heavy tapestry of cultural portrayal, delicately unveiled by his compendium. A graduate of the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, his career kicked off with a role as Shafiq Rasul in Michael Winter bottom’s docudrama film, The Road to Guantánamo. The plot? A tale of three young British men wrongfully detained by the US after a visit to Afghanistan in 2001. A wave of parts, both satirical and archetypal of his British-Pakistani heritage, followed—a rite of passage Riz describes as stages one and two of ethnic portrayals in the book The Good Immigrant. For him, this looked like being cast as the aspiring suicide bomber Omar in Chris Morris’s comedy feature Four Lions and finance professor Changez Khan in Mira Nair’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist. Now, at 41 years old, Riz has reached a kind of nirvana, paved with the bricks he used to breach a notoriously homogeneous industry.
“There’s a very particular mould of masculinity and the idea of what a leading man is. The goal was to either hack that, to become that or to explode that.”
In his subconscious search for a face that looked like his own, a young Riz, born to Pakistani parents in Wembley, London, found Bruce Lee. He paints a childhood picture of endearing chaos, coloured by afternoons spent with family, laughing, telling stories, and bickering. As his uncles pored over horror movies and kung fu flicks, Riz was captivated by the resounding presence of the Hong Kong-born actor and martial artist. “It wasn’t just because he was such an incredible cultural figure, performer and martial artist. It was also because he was a leading man who didn’t look like other leading men,” he pauses. “He was smashing glass ceilings and creating a new global iconography for heroism. Something about that was really exciting to me on a deep level before I even understood what I was responding to. There’s a very particular mould of masculinity and the idea of what a leading man is. The goal was to either hack that, to become that or to explode that.”
When discussing his own place in culture, however, Riz remains self-effacing. I observe that he has sparked a similar ripple effect in defying boundaries alongside peers like Dev Patel and Hasan Minhaj. In Hollywood’s century-long history, reference points have been glaringly scarce, with few South Asian leads—aside from the presence of Ben Kingsley. Laying the foundation for unprecedented grounds has come with a double-edged sword of exemplification and exclusion, a conversation Riz is understandably tired of being the crux of. But, what exactly comes after successfully paving the way?
“I think what comes after conversations about representation is a sense of freedom to just be you—a freedom to transcend any of these labels. For me, now, it’s about moving past representing and presenting yourself. It’s a beautiful struggle and a deep sense of meaning to have your work tied to something bigger. If we’re purely thinking about the cultural impact and sociopolitical relevance of what we do, then we are disconnecting from ourselves,” Riz replies.
“The great irony with acting is that it allows you to defy all boundaries and any sense of ‘us’ and ‘them’. If you’re really captivated by the story, you will find yourself in it, even though you have nothing to do with that character or share no similarities or life experiences. And so, it’s ironic that to get to that point, you have to deal with labels of identity, conversations about representation and people who are underrepresented. I guess what I’m thinking about more and more is not, ‘What does my community need from me? What do I wish existed in the culture?’ But ‘What do I need from me? Where do I want to explore this sense of freedom’?”
It’s this sense of curiosity that has propelled Riz’s career to stratospheric heights—an ascension that, I note, has come with a fair bit of contention. Aware of the glass ceiling for South Asian actors in the UK, he explored opportunities in the US at the suggestion of his friend and fellow actor, Idris Elba. In 2014, he landed a role in Dan Gilroy’s Nightcrawler, playing Rick, the assistant to Jake Gyllenhaal’s Lou Bloom. This proved to be the first drop in a resounding surge, eventually leading him to his role as Nasir Khan, a young Pakistani-American student accused of murder, in the crime drama The Night Of. “I was being cited as an exciting newcomer even when I had been doing this for 12 years. You kind of enter different people’s consciousness at different moments. I think in the United States, The Night Of put me on people’s radars in a certain way. In the United Kingdom, Four Lions or Shifty did that. I think Sound of Metal did that in different ways. You just continue to find new audiences and new connections, and that’s exciting. That’s something that, in many ways, you don’t really control,” Riz reflects.
This repertoire has led the actor to receive some of the industry’s most prestigious accolades. As of press time, he holds an Academy Award for Best Live Action Short Film and a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Limited Series or Movie, among others. An unofficial award of sorts? Winning the hearts of onlookers in an innocuously tender sweep of his wife Fatima Farheen Mirza’s hair on the Oscars red carpet.
Riz’s relentless drive to create is unmistakable. Today, he has transitioned into a creator role, supported by a strong industry presence that enables him to produce his projects across television and film and, most importantly, to tell the stories he is passionate about. A significant part of this is driven by his production company, Left Handed Films, which is set to unveil a reimagining of Hamlet directed by Aneil Karia. This project, 13 years in the making, marks the end of a creative chapter for him. “Left Handed has been a big part of no longer knocking on the door to get into someone else’s room, but simply throwing your own party,” he shares. Described as a version of Hamlet no one has seen before, WME Independent will launch the adaptation, which will tackle themes of disparity, mental health and duty. It will also star actors Morfydd Clark and Joe Alwyn. Delving into his working relationship with Karia, Riz describes finding a language together, intending to build a nuanced, unique experience.
“My entire dramatic education was in Shakespeare under Rob Clare at the Central School of Speech and Drama. As a rapper, I found beauty and affinity in the verse, the rhythm and the language of those plays,” he adds. “I’ve always felt that many of these classic, canonical plays come to life most vividly in non-classical settings like my own communities, where themes of honour, who you should marry and your father’s spirit not being able to rest until you’ve set things right are prevalent. In an interesting way, I felt that the thing that can keep this piece of classic British culture alive is a community just like ours—immigrant communities. There’s something ironic, beautiful and powerful about that. This is definitely a labour of love; it’s something very different.”
“Thriving, for me, is a perspective. It’s a point of view. I think a lot of it comes from gratitude. The more that I can be grateful for all the blessings and small moments, the more it opens me up to a mode of curiosity and positivity.”
The latest iteration of Riz’s passion will come to life in a still-untitled comedy series recently picked up by Amazon Prime Video. Riz notes that this is a story he’s been wanting to tell for a long time. The eight-episode series follows aspiring actor Shah Latif, who encounters a major roadblock just as he is about to land the role of a lifetime. Riz will collaborate with television producer and writer Ben Karlin, among others.
Despite everything, Riz remains unwavering in his values—a large part of this is reflected in his advocacy work. He has raised awareness regarding Rohingya and Syrian refugees and has been vocal about the importance of diversity and inclusion. In October last year, he was one of the few Hollywood actors to call for a ceasefire in Gaza. “It’s a tremendous privilege to be able to speak to any situation going on around the world and potentially have anyone listen or have their mind opened by it. Regarding Palestine, I think it’s very clear that we need a ceasefire now. We need an immediate and permanent ceasefire. And this isn’t because I’m an expert. I’m guided by experts at the UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights, the International Criminal Court and the International Court of Justice.”
He adds: “It also goes beyond Palestine. What are we saying about the world we’re living in? What are we saying about whose life has worth and whose life doesn’t? At the same time, what gives me hope is seeing many people around the world becoming incredibly engaged socially and politically, striving to create a different world.’”
While he alludes to never feeling like the “work is done”, Riz stands at the pinnacle of his career. As we speak, he has wrapped up production on another momentous project, Wes Anderson’s The Phoenician Scheme. The American action film marks his debut with the director, alongside Hollywood heavyweights like Tom Hanks, Bill Murray and Willem Dafoe. Though details about it are still under wraps, it’s clear that it’s defined a certain turning point, a peak if you will.
“Thriving, for me, is a perspective. It’s a point of view. I think a lot of it comes from gratitude. The more that I can be grateful for all the blessings and small moments, the more it opens me up to a mode of curiosity and positivity. It’s connected to feeling like you’re in a state of abundance so you can give—attention, energy, creativity—rather than being focused on trying to get. It is feeling enough gratitude that you can be truly, expansively generous.”
Editor-in-chief Desmond Lim
Grooming Michael Dueñas
Photographer’s assistants Josh DeAngelis and Matt Mimiaga
Digital technician Merlin Viethen
Producer Jordan Metz
Pre-order your copy of the Vogue Man ‘Thrive’ issue online or pick it up on newsstands from 15 July 2024.
