Speaker
Riz Ahmed
Appearances over time
2 episodes
Episodes
2
Podcasts
Quotes & moments
Riz Ahmed's first confrontation with racist violence — skinheads held a knife to his brother's throat — set him on a lifelong journey of identity navigation and code-switching.
Riz Ahmed says being brown in the West feels like being stuck in a spy thriller you didn't ask for — surveillance, torn allegiances, mistrust — which became the emotional core of Bait.
When told it was impossible to get James Bond rights from the Broccoli family, Ahmed decided that if there was even a 1% chance, he had to go 100% all-in — and wrote the show before receiving sign-off.
Since playing the villain Carlton Drake in Venom (2018) opposite Tom Hardy, Riz Ahmed has deliberately stepped away from big-budget blockbusters to tell more personal stories.
The distance between how you want to be seen and who you are when no one's watching is a direct measurement of the shame you carry.
Our brains subjectively experience 50% of our entire lifetime between ages 0 and 8, which is why time feels to accelerate as we age.
Ahmed notes there hasn't been a major contemporary Shakespeare adaptation since Kenneth Branagh's 1997 Hamlet, giving his own modern Hamlet a clear long-tail cultural argument.
Riz Ahmed spent 2.5 months in hospital with an autoimmune condition that left him unable to walk, dropping to under 50 kilograms, during the filming of Star Wars: Rogue One.
Although Bait is a British-set show, its writers' room was held in Los Angeles, commissioned by the LA office of Prime Video and then produced by Prime's UK office — illustrating how globalized the industry has become.
Ahmed invokes Steve Jobs' concept of the 'focus group of one' — if something genuinely excites you, that gut feeling is a reliable signal that it will excite others too.
During his hospitalisation Riz Ahmed's weight fell to just under 50 kilograms — approximately 100 pounds — and he lost the ability to lift his arms or swallow food.
Riz Ahmed says the moment he sat down holding his Academy Award, his inner critic was at an all-time high — programming him to strive, not to savour.
The producer of Everything Everywhere All at Once drove Ubers throughout development and half of production to make ends meet — cited as evidence that unpaid development is unsustainable.
Riz Ahmed performed a monologue for SNL UK about identity crisis, joking that he sounds like a mix between Stormzy and Rishi Sunak — using humour to embrace the contradiction.
To market Bait, Ahmed filmed fake press conferences where he 'crashes out' over being laughed at for wanting to play Bond — the clip went viral, with 80% defending him and 20% calling him arrogant.
Being brown in the West means living with surveillance, torn allegiances, and mistrust — the exact texture of a spy thriller. That feeling is the emotional engine behind Bait, and why James Bond served as the perfect genre vehicle to explore it.
James Bond came late to the Bait writers' room, but he arrived as the perfect symbol. The show is really about self-love and how people chase validation in all the wrong places — and what better emblem of decisive, desirable, alpha-male aspiration than 007?
Everyone said getting Bond rights from the Broccoli family was impossible. Ahmed wrote the show anyway, went to brunch with Barbara Broccoli, handed her the scripts — and she got it. A 1% chance demands 100% commitment.
Nobody is the Queen of England, yet millions identified with The Crown. Nobody is a Goodfellas gangster, yet Scorsese's film is universal. Specificity signals authenticity, and authenticity is what audiences actually connect with.
When you can't afford to appeal to everyone, you have no choice but to go niche — and niche is exactly what breaks out. Fleabag, I May Destroy You, Baby Reindeer: all proof that UK television's resource constraints are secretly its greatest creative asset.
The producer of Everything Everywhere All at Once drove Ubers to survive development. That's not a badge of honour — it's a system failure. Ahmed argues that until Hollywood pays for the development process itself, it will keep losing the best emerging talent to algorithms and ad revenue.
They filmed fake press conferences where an interviewer laughs at the idea of Ahmed playing Bond, and he 'crashes out.' It went viral: 20% thought he was a douche, 80% defended him. The show is called Bait. The audience took it.
There's no longer a wall between creative and commerce in entertainment. Producers must be marketers; creators must be brand strategists. The narrative through-line now runs from inception all the way to the social video — whether you like it or not.
Episode 2 is a Bond film. Episode 3 is a Bollywood soap opera. Episode 4 is a Linklater walk-and-talk. Bait's definition of success wasn't ratings — it was whether the team could pull off six wildly different genre experiments within a single story.
The next generation's most talented storytellers are on Instagram and TikTok — but asking them to walk away from their audience and income for two years of unpaid development isn't a pitch; it's a dare. Ahmed wants to close that gap.
Ahmed spent years trying to 'change the furniture in other people's rooms' — popping up in big IP films to stretch culture from within. Then he asked a different question: what if he built his own rooms? That pivot gave us Sound of Metal, Mogul Mowgli, and Bait.
Trust your gut on creative decisions — then surround yourself with hard-nosed people who will tell you it will never sell. That's the balance. Don't try to hold both things yourself; outsource the commercial reality check.
When Riz Ahmed was 8, skinheads pressed a knife to his brother's throat. That moment of violent othering didn't just scar him — it sparked his entire creative identity, launching a lifelong code-switch between cultures that eventually became his art.
Riz Ahmed started filming Star Wars: Rogue One — his first-ever studio movie — and one week in, woke up unable to walk. He was hospitalised for 2.5 months, dropped to under 50 kilograms, and feared he might die. While friends texted about his Star Wars photos, he was desperately trying to get a nurse's attention so he wouldn't wet the bed.
Riz Ahmed told people from marginalised backgrounds that the very thing creating resistance in their lives is also the key that unlocks something no one else can offer. He felt like an alien at Oxford. He's grateful now he stuck it out. The obstacle is the way.
Analysis
What they talk about
- Arts 31%
- Health & Fitness 19%
- Society & Culture 19%
- Business 15%
- Religion & Spirituality 8%
- Technology 4%
- Comedy 4%
Connections
Shows they appear on and people they share episodes with. Drag to explore.
