A Deeply Unserious Britain-America Summit with Riz Ahmed

Lemonada. So impressive. Can I tell you something? Bro, I don't know what the hell it's called. Why are you f***ing this up? It represents the community. I'm so dizzy, I'm drinking water in a mug. You're drinking water in a mug, yeah. Riz, bro. Can we lock in? We are, yeah. But we leave each other very long, very long voice memos. Yeah. It might take me a month to get to it. Hey, but it'll say 17 minutes, 34 seconds. Actually, I think you starting a podcast makes a lot of sense. Just getting messages from you is like, oh, what's this week's episode? Yeah, I'll do that with an ad read in it. Yeah, checking how your family's doing, brought to you by ZipRecruiter. Riz Ahmed is the most talented person I know. He is a legit polymath. He went to Oxford. He could have done anything, but he just happened to choose to be an Emmy-winning actor and a critically acclaimed musician. Dude, he's even got a Star Wars action figure of himself. My man is a choking hazard for children under three. And now he has created his first television series for Amazon called Bait. The show is f***ing awesome. Fun fact. The co-creator of Patriot Act and this show, HMDK, Prashant Bikramanijam, was a writer and producer on Bait. Now, Prashant wasn't in Star Wars, but he was in a college a cappella group called Chi-Town. Prashant did this in college. I sat down with my buddy Riz to talk about representation. Representation within a broken system means nothing. There's no point being in a room if the room just changes you. The difference between American MAGA and British MAGA. The big difference is all racist people have less guns, which is great. And why? He used James Bond as a narrative device for this new show, Bait. Jordan Peele said when he made Get Out, he said being black in America is like being in a horror. My take is that being brown in the West is kind of like being in a spy thriller. But we are going to kick things off by taking a closer look at Riz's acting superpower. Quiet intensity. Riz, what do you think your greatest quality is? My greatest quality is, I hope, I hope, is that I'm a good dad. No. Your superpower is your quiet intensity. You know what I'm talking about. That's what I'm talking about. That's what they pay the big bucks for. Now, we're going to play a game. Okay? I am going to give you four emotional prompts. And you are going to respond to each of these prompts with the same line. I think these avocados have gone bad. Repeat the line back to me. Are you aware of the line? Bro, because I have to put you through four scenarios. Just so I know that you've memorized it. I got it. Okay, let's go. You suspect your girlfriend has cheated on you, but you're not sure. As she comes into the kitchen, you turn to her and you say, I think these avocados have gone bad. No, man. I didn't do it. Stop, bro. This is not going to be like your audition. I want to retake. No, no, no. Let me give you the other one. Okay, good. Come on. This is not your audition for Bodhi where you put the tie on your head and all this. I did it. I did so many takes. All right. Hey, hey, hey. All right. Hello. You're a serial killer with your victim tied up, helpless in your basement. Fucking hell. As you go over to your rack of torture instruments, you grab a drill. You hold it to their head and you say, I think these avocados have gone bad. You're a doctor. Yeah. And you have to give your patient, who is also your father. Oh, love this scenario. The news that he has one week to live. Oh, my God. You put your hand on his shoulder. You look at him and you say, I'm boo. Yeah. Right. That was. Let's set the table because a lot of people don't know this. There is a big difference between South Asian diaspora in America. Yeah. South Asian diaspora in the UK. Yeah. First things first. How long have South Asians been in Britain? How long have you guys been in Britain? Hundreds of years. Hundreds of years. Yeah. So, obviously, Britain's relationship with South Asia goes way back, you know, because of colonialism and that whole thing. So, you had, I mean, actually, interesting. There's a take, you know, Wuthering Heights is out at the moment. Wuthering Heights, my hot take, one of the best Bollywood films I've seen. What's that? Why? It's basically a Bollywood film, bro. There's like music. There's nartak. There's like dancing. There's a love story. It's like, oh, it feels like a Devdas kind of vibe. That's my take on it. Okay. So, I enjoyed it on that level. But, you know, Heathcliff. Heathcliff is described as like dark-skinned and swarthy. Is swarthy low-key offensive? I don't even know what that means. Yeah, it's offensive. We're having people nod off camera. But he's described in the book as like dark-skinned and possibly of gypsy extraction and all this kind of stuff. And that's part of the whole taboo of what Catherine shouldn't be getting with him. A lot of like literary kind of, you know, academics and people and historians look at it and go like, he was an Indian sepoy. He was basically an Indian sailor or something, you know, there was that colonial. There was that colonial connection. And that's actually. And so you had people in the UK, the Lulakas, going about hundreds of years. I think the first Indian member of parliament was in the 1800s. So, yeah, it goes way back. You know, the founders of India and Pakistan, they themselves went to Oxford and Cambridge. Fact check me if that's wrong. And so I've been there for a minute, but I would say the big kind of migratory push was happening after World War II. You know, Britain was a decimated country and needed to rebuild itself. And so it invited people from its colonies, from the Caribbean, from South Asia. To come and help and please rebuild the country. And there was this kind of narrative that, like, actually, that's the homeland. Like, as people who live under empire, like Britain is the mothership. So there was this kind of really blended sense of identity for better and worse that, like, Britain is home, even though I've never been there. And so it was post-World War II. And you started having a very working class community coming in, primarily to help work in factories, to help build the infrastructure, you know. To literally rebuild Britain, you know. Yeah. And similarly from the Caribbean as well. And that continued. It was, you know, spiked again in the 70s. My family came there after the big kind of cyclones in Bangladesh, after the Indo-Pac war, after dictatorship and the Cold War started taking root in South Asia. You had more and more people coming. So my family got there in the 1970s. From what I understand, obviously, you've had, like, Punjabi-Mexican marriages. Right. You know, people building railroads. In California and stuff like that, in America, for a long time. Right. But the bigger migratory push was more 80s, 90s, that kind of thing. So we had Chinese Exclusionary Act. So a bunch of Asian people came. Then in 1882, they were like, get out. All y'all got to go. Yeah, yeah. Then 1964. I remember that guy was there. Yeah. Civil Rights Act, 64. That's signed by Lyndon B. Johnson. A lot of the work of the civil rights movement. Then that brings over a bunch of highly educated Asians and Macy's. And that's the big difference. Because I think the bar for migration. If you're a South Asian in America was basically you have to have like a master's or a PhD or something. So I remember coming here. I start coming here like 2012, shooting the pilot of the night of. I'm hanging out with people who's like, yeah, my mom is a professor. So I was like, what? And just seeing this and the suburban kind of thing. And it was interesting to me, I think in the UK, there's a lot more similarity. Of course, they're different. I'm not flattening the experience at all. So different in so many ways. But being of Afro-Caribbean descent and being of Indian or Pakistani or South Asian descent, there were a lot more similarities to that. So that kind of civil rights struggle, if you want to call it that, it took place arm in arm. It's a lot more adjacent. Right. Whereas over here, it's like, nah, that is not the same. No, segregated. And again, I'm not saying it's the same there, but very different. It's kind of the immigrant experience kind of happened in one. Kind of in a bigger rush post-World War II over there. I want to do a compare and contrast. What does the Rishi Sunak moment mean politically? The Sadiq Khan moment mean politically in the UK for the South Asian diaspora? And then what does the Zoran Mamdani moment mean for the South Asian diaspora in the US? How do these compare and contrast? How are they similar? How are they different? It's an interesting question. You know, look, I mean, I think that have there been brown politicians before in the UK that are prominent? They have. Yeah. But a mayor of London, a prime minister, that is, of course. Significant. I think what's more interesting than their brownness, and I think this is where the representation conversation kind of becomes a bit defunct, is like representation in and of itself means nothing, right? It's what are you representing, right? And I think what was so kind of groundbreaking and interesting and beautiful about Zoran Zuin is that is the kind of he did not step into politics in a way that was deracinated in a way that maybe Rishi Sunak did. He did not step in in a way that was apologizing for his brownness, not in a way that was pandering to. kind of anti-brown or anti-muslim sentiments and that's something that i think is really significant i think that's also something significant with sadiq khan but yes i mean by comparison like i guess you're right we've had a muslim man now for a very long time yeah in in the uk uh in london which is you know our biggest city i think what is also interesting to me is like how both of these guys are like facing so much kind of racism backlash criticism and in particular this is really hilarious meme that's like big on youtube and instagram which is what's the meme london's been taken over oh yeah right here i am i'm here with security we're walking around london like you're on safari or something yeah like you gotta turn up strapped like bro a policeman carrying sticks bro take them out with a slingshot like and so they've got this whole thing where where london's been taken over yeah and like yeah sharia law and it's dangerous sadiq khan's london mate he's a taliban actually violent crime in london is an all-time low but of course that's not the interesting talking point so in the same way that zoran has become a lightning rod for islamophobic narratives in the states sadiq khan has in the uk what's meaningful about those and how that's really different to the rishi sunak moment is what are they representing you know what i mean representation within a broken system means nothing unless you're going to try and change that system you know there's no point being in a room if the room just changes you and i think that's what rishi sunak represented to me and a lot of people now having said that there are a lot of very right wing leaning you know like republican voting south asians that kind of thing yeah oh brown so i'm sure like for some some conservative voting south asians that was a big moment for them but actually to me it showed like how limiting it can be to talk about representation as an end in itself right representation is only useful to have a seat at the table if you're going to change up what's on the table and i think that's what sadiq has done that's what zoran's promising to do so so we also have brown maga here you guys clearly have brown maga there well actually the the chair but your maga dress is better than our maga you think bro the maga here they're wearing fucking athleisure suits it looks like they shrunk their suits and the goddamn driver how does our maga dress nigel farage is a well-dressed person he's a bigot but he's well-dressed you think he's gone bro you can let me just say this about republican racism you know he used to be in a 44 regular well-tailored suit with a perfect peak lapel now these goddamn losers are going to be in a well-tailored suit they're wearing these lululemon athleisure untuck it.com dress for the yeah these kohan fucking and by the way i was sponsored by kohan and i appreciate the money but these kohan like fucking i'm at the airport you can wear it to the airport and the golf course like bigotry needs to be refined what we used to be a country right yeah yeah i guess i mean yeah that's one thing people do say but but your maga does dress fascism fascists traditionally used to dress very well didn't they yeah totally that should be the new met gala thing yeah og fascism just be like all right here we have it turned up no their collars were on point the tailoring was on point i have no part i'm not co-zoning this any of this i'm not because he's invited i'm not invited it's fascist fascism it would be really funny though if they're just like i'm dressed as mao chairman mao you know it's true yeah he was he had a good neru collar there's a lot of like yeah yeah yeah you're right they were at least well dressed is what i'm saying what is the difference between the right-wing movement there and the right-wing movement here is it also a proto-fascist movement there is it what are the similarities and differences there's a lot of similarities and they're talking about replacement the great replacement theory and all that um it's about anti-migration a lot of it's about the lightning rod of islamophobia a lot of it's taking place along the backdrop of like western economic decline and rising inequality i think that's a lot of similarities yes the big difference is we are people racist people have less guns okay which is great which is really lucky which is really good they're not strapped well yeah i mean they get to spend that money on their outfits okay they made that decision yeah yeah exactly so they they they look dangerously fashionable okay but they won't kill you as quickly gosh um so i think that's the big difference i also kind of feel like there is a thing now with american the american right wing where it's just like cartoonishly brazen right you know what i mean it's just like like the things you read the tweets you read it's like it's like wwe wrestling or something you know what i mean whereas i think there is still an attempt often to try and dress up british racism as like polite common sense there's a decorum to it yeah exactly exactly so um and that's one thing that that you know you could say for better or worse is that like americans are much more in your face about what they think and the brits kind of like you know um kill you with a smile yeah so i think that's a slight cultural difference but i think actually what we're seeing is like startlingly similar playbook and narratives taking root everywhere from like india to the us the uk to hungary to france yeah you know what i mean it's it's like the same couple of talking points like xenophobia it's like um gender right the gender war the culture and the country's immigration yeah exactly the uk is a dead empire and the united states is a i mean it's it's an instagram country i told you this that you live in an instagram country so there's like instagram countries where you bring your girlfriend you take photos but you take photos and yeah you whisper in castles and you keep it moving it's an instagram country you know france is an instagram country hungary is an instagram country do you think why isn't america an instagram country i mean we're interest like with the yellow taxis and they're like i'm walking around today going like when is like rachel and ross gonna like pop out of the next corner no there's too many potholes it's too shitty here yeah okay it's not aesthetically pleasing but we are so you come from a dead empire this is a dying empire yeah the united states we're here we're on our deathbed we're coding we're about to die of cardiac arrest as someone who is living in the future and has lived in the future what do we have to look forward to as we see the light well you have to look forward to is a lot of people claiming that they can bring the empire back to life by doing increasingly stupid stuff like brexit so like you know the fantasy of empire doesn't leave just because the reality of it has left you know yeah it's uh that that mythology is so intoxicating and powerful you know and honestly the idea of like we once were great and we're going to get back there again um it's kind of something that has haunted so many civilizations again and again you know like the periods of the roman empire about trying to get back to where we were before or um you know this kind of like i think is like a big is a big part of the politics of denial you know so i i kind of think that the reality of empire arguably is dying arguably may already be dead the more forceful you have to be to control your empire the more shaky your control is over it probably right um so i kind of think that actually that the narrative of empire will remain and may actually become even more strident and so the actions to try and shore that empire up it's like you know the smallest kid in the like it's the small guy yeah outside the club at 3am at 3am you've got to be worried about right it's like that kind of over compensatory thing so i think we're going to see more bombing of more countries and i think we're going to see more of this kind of like um beating of the war drum more posturing more grandiose narratives the more the reality is kind of sliding away from that because it's like it's it's clutching desperately it's something that's slipping through your fingers so there's that to look forward to this is gonna get worse i think so i think so oh man the worst is yet to come yeah hey let's talk about the new show bait amazon let's get it march 25th streaming now you pitched me bait at swingers diner in west hollywood you acted out the entire series i did yeah he basically did an interpretive monologue to me at swingers that's true yeah um do you gotta tell you something you invited me to this swingers diner place yeah you're like man the smoothies the sundaes the ice cream the pancakes they're amazing yeah and we sit down and they go like hey what are you having and i'll go oh man i'll have the like i'm in america screw it i'll have the pancakes with the ice cream and the sundae yeah and you go to you and you're like ice water please it's like what the hell is that bro you set me up man i set you up i did set you up i did set you up i was like let's get wild yeah yeah yeah i let you take the first bite of sin but i got an oreo shake stop capping bro i got an oreo shake to cap it off no whip they know what it is i go there all the time it's my favorite ticket uh to go to but anyways you pitched it to me it's my favorite ticket to go to but anyways you pitched it to me real quick i'm not going to have you do the full because it was incredible you actually did the cold open of the pilot all the way to the end i'm not going to have you do that but it was pretty amazing people a couple of hours wouldn't it yeah yeah but what is the premise of bait the premise of bay is there's this kind of out of work british pakistani actor who somehow gets through to auditions to be the next james bond and when word gets out that he might be the next bond people have some very strong opinions about it so much so that his life starts to resemble the spy thriller he's auditioning for so you know like jordan peele said when he made get out he said being black in america is like being in a horror that's why i made it my take is that being brown in the west is kind of like being in a spy thriller right against your will and um and so i wanted to use that wheelhouse use the world of bond use the world of like paranoid spy thrillers to actually do like a comedy it's about how life always feels like one big audition i think that that's like something some of the people can relate to even if they don't audition for a living you know we're constantly trying to project this version of ourselves it's in control successful desirable but behind that beautiful you know instagram photo is like the panic attack and the loneliness and the anxiety so it's about that gap between how we want to be seen and who we are right and i've told it in this playground of of um the world of bond and it's out of work actor do you remember the original seed of the idea is it true that it came from chris morris that's such a funny thing you should say it didn't come from chris morris but here's the thing so i had um been kind of scribbling down ideas for about 10 years and those ideas were all about like i was saying that gap between how life really is and how it's seen right let me give you an example when i um when it got announced i was in star wars right people are texting me like bro you've made it you're blowing up you're killing it and what people don't realize is you're in a hollywood movie you still have to do your own laundry right right so what's happened is we've got a water leak washing machine's broken haven't got any clean clothes so i head out to do my laundry in a massive laundry bag full of dirty clothes yeah uh you head to the laundromat pink swan shit pink pink swim shorts bright green puffer jacket flip-flops only clothes i have tried to wash my sneakers as well stupid idea i'm on my way i realized my brother's birthday i haven't got him a cake i head in to tesco which is our local supermarket i think let me get my birthday pizza pizza that he likes i forget to beat the pizza properly on the self-checkout they think this is the world's worst shoplifter yeah he's like he's like this guy's um not well you know the way he's dressed and he's doing this whole thing he's rushing around i need a pizza i need a birthday candle for a pizza you know it's a bizarre order i'm trying to check out and they catch me and they're like hey you're shoplifting and i'm like no i'm not and then i'm late and also i've got to do my laundry and i've got water and all that and i'm like i'm not going to do my laundry and i'm going to do my leak yeah i'm seeing right you're in swim trunks in a puffer you're like why would i shoplift yeah exactly i totally and then they basically um the situation devolves to me kind of basically on my two hours sleep trying to deal with his leak going dude i'm not shoplifting i'm in star wars and they're like he's definitely crazy you're banned yes we're gonna call the police if you ever come back to tesco's that was the reality okay the perception is like i'm on a yacht with han solo right yeah and i just started writing up these examples and so it grew out of that but shaping it into this version of this story through the prism of james bond that happened when i connected with my co-showrunner ben carlin he's incredible super experienced writer works a lot on the um what's it called the show the the show john stewart's show colbert report bro he's right here are you getting this wrong bro i don't know what the hell are you this up he's it up they're all connected to something about american late night they are all jesus they are all called the tonight show every single one of your shows tonight with jay leno tonight with jay jimmy fallon brother there's a lot of tonight have a little bit of respect saying it's the tonight show and it's the late show okay the late show the tonight show these are different parts of the night give the man his flowers you're screwing this whole bit up all right okay do you want me to set this up properly look you gave it an interview in gq in 2018 you were in an iconic movie called four lions which is huge in the diaspora basically the premise of four lines you should watch this movie you probably haven't seen the movie but if you're brown you've seen the movie you've seen the movie the premise of four lines is a bunch of dudes try to join al-qaeda but they're too stupid to join actually a lot of white people's favorite movie as well oh really in the uk it's like it's like a cult classic in the way that i don't know what you guys have like napoleon dynamite or something it's like a lot of people it's like it's my jam got it so it's it's so it's a sunday school classic here in america like if you went to sunday school together like juicy four lions like it's a very subversive comedy but chris morris writer director of four lions tried to convince you to do it then this was written about in a gq interview now brother look i don't always trust interviews okay but you tell me if this is true he's still worried about starring in it until morris put it like this this is a step towards a brown james bot and suddenly ahmed says he got it this is so impressive can i tell you something i thought finally if you're doing a podcast you could finally leave the whole powerpoint thing behind never never bro but even doing a podcast no never my guy's got a powerpoint thing going on it's what's happening it's amazing it's very impressive well what's interesting is how this connects to bait bro well this is very interesting because really what is james and what is what chris meant by this i said i don't want to play a terrorist i don't be doing that kind of stuff i'm only playing lead relatable roles that people can relate to and he said there's a step towards brown james bond and what he means by that is these characters despite their misguided political views or the background will be characters you are rooting for and um and so it was it was that was definitely maybe somewhere in my subconscious and so like it wasn't like four lions led to bait but i guess the similarities are this is that you're rooting for an unusual kind of character and also the style of humor the comedy the fast-paced kind of right witty british kind of sweary kind of thing but in that moment did what he was did that seem tantalizing in the early aughts of like right hey man if you do this role you could you could you could be number one on the call sheet this is your path right yes no i didn't ever think that i would actually be james bond by doing four lines quite the opposite um but i did think that he had a point in that if you want to play characters that are relatable and a wide section of the audience can root for and not be kind of othered in the stories that doesn't mean you shouldn't lean into the specificity of who you are yeah you know i'm trying to say there's two ways of trying to like connect with audiences one is like i'm bob i'm playing a character named bob i'm dave let's not talk about my background or anything let's just it's just going to be like i'm going to be like i'm going to be like i'm going to be random it's going to be like we're not even talking about it the other part of it is like i don't know like what cool is doing you know what cooler michael b are doing is that we're going to lean into the specificity of our identity our heritage our culture but it's just slaps and it's like and so people will relate to the specificity of it so i think that's something that i took with me and i think bait is that show that is both very very specific i mean we literally filmed it in the neighborhood i grew up in the park where i first held hands with a girl and first time i got jumped that literal park that staircase is in the show the first time i had a panic attack when i was about to go on stage do a club we restaged that exact scene in that exact venue in north london kentish town forum and so much of it is is leaning into the specificity and the feedback i've got is it people just finding it very relatable on an emotional level yeah i loved it bro so it had all these ingredients of these kind of crazy stories but what made it coalesce together and and tell a story through the prism of james bond was when i connected with my co-show runner um ben carlin who's incredible experienced writer showrunner multi-award winning don and he when talking to him about my life and talking about some of those juxtapositions talked about how my name had been mentioned in relation to james bond a couple of times and potential casting and press and whatever right and he was like that's it that's the that's that's that's the symbol of aspiration success manhood desirability that this character needs to be chasing because we're actually feels like this right it couldn't be more different so james bond is a really useful archetype to explore that journey of really of self-love and needing self-love so to me the series really grapples with paradox and and and i feel like your work is at its best when it does that it's not giving these hard answers and in the west in america there's very much of like what is the answer to this how do we exactly stop this how do we stop capitalism how do we stop and what you what you've done brilliantly on the show is you in each episode unpack different paradoxes episode one the rumor leaks that shah is going to be the next james bond that he's auditioning that he's auditioning to be the next james bond shah's father says something he drops a bar that i think is the ultimate first paradox call me if you need a body double for sex scenes that's the first one which is yo a lot of brown horn dogs out there for older men that still think they got lead in the pencil love that love that joke let's put that on the shelf but the the the one that i really love that that you dropped in the trailer that a lot of people i don't think or let's double click on this one is this is their country yeah don't provoke them don't provoke them don't don't bother them you know i sometimes think maybe my dad was right with that because he did say that to me well that's the first paradox which is do you dream big do you go for it or it's like hey look if i do that keep your yeah because our generation was keep your head down or they're going to throw us out and our generation was like they're going to throw us out this is my country i'm born here and you know we're part of the fabric of this even before we even got to this country we you know our blood and soil and toil built this place in cotton you know in empire and like there's an argument to say that like the the prominence of our stories the strident tone of our desire to have a seat at a table the unapologetic nature of our culture and our self-expression is part of what we are seeing this big right-wing backlash against right that actually it is and you see that i guess you know with the when people are getting you know oh look who they cast for the little mermaid look at the cast in cinderella you know you see all this kind of stuff people just like these archetypes these cartoon characters yeah are like mean so much to them they feel like they're symbols of their primacy And so there's an argument to say, that you know our parents were right in a way is like trying to aim higher and trying to act like you belong there and it's your table as well of course you can have a seat at it that that ends up creating backlash and provoking them does that mean we shouldn't do it no of course it doesn't mean we shouldn't do it doesn't mean like you know um no it's tricky bro so i was watching the martian this is both those things are true yeah i was watching the martian and my dad walked in he got super mad and he just basically said why are you watching this they're not sending brown people to the moon first of all i think he wasn't on the moon i think he was on mars he's on another planet but i take najmi's point he's like the fuck you why are you thinking about what did he want you to watch what do our dads want us to watch if our dads could like navi connect to the fucking news they are they have they are the news is fried to their brain the news and whatsapp bro it's like this to their news isn't it yeah the navi style they just plug right in style yeah and as you watch um indian news ztv indian news ndtv yeah that's it yeah is that so it's an interesting thing meaning but i got into this argument with him it's simultaneously sad and real he is right like what the they're not trying to this this kind of chris nolan interstellar narrative is not does not include bengali immigrants in it respectfully yeah yeah right this sort of like hey time is my greatest challenge i'm gonna bend time that's the greatest like bro we have real challenges what are you talking about like hey it's julia louis dreyfus from the wiser than me podcast among other things and i've got a little holiday wisdom for you hosting during the holidays means lots of cooking and that means your trash is going to be full of smelly rotting food yuck so here's the wisdom get a mill food recycler i did we've had ours for years and it has totally transformed our kitchen it's unbelievable how much cleaner every day we've had our kitchen plus it's so easy to use you toss in basically any food you don't eat peels pits meat dairy bones last year we put in a whole turkey carcass really while you sleep mill automatically dries and grinds all your food waste down to about a fifth of its size that means at night you can fill it after a big elaborate dinner and by morning there'll be room for breakfast nothing rots nothing stinks no fruit flies and my favorite part no more of those gross be mid-dinner garbage runs if you want a cleaner calmer kitchen this holiday season go to mill.com slash wiser for an exclusive offer that's mill.com slash wiser happy hosting if stories didn't matter then people wouldn't try and censor them if stories didn't matter then um stories would not be banned or they would not be considered subversive we would not give them the attention that we do yes part of why we give stories attention is part of like kind of distract people entertain people numb people that's i'm going to call that entertainment i'm going to call that art you know but a lot of kind of um the reason why we do is because in built to us is like we have a reverence for story because it's how we make meaning out of our reality you know and and the weighting that we give to different characters and stories or um so you believe nicole kinman huh you believe nicole kinman mostly why do you believe nicole kinman why what'd you do man you know what i'm talking about play nicole kinman we come to this place for magic we come to amc theaters to laugh to cry to care because we need that yeah all of us of course we do that indescribable feeling we get yep when the lights begin to dim amc 16 or 25 here in manhattan and we go somewhere here we go we've never been before not just entertained not just entertaining together dazzling images nicole took all my talking points i want nothing for the rest of this podcast honestly this is like my this is the bit that i do our heroes feel like the best part of us and stories feel perfect and powerful i've got a take on this yeah because here don't interrupt her they are amc theaters we make movies better that's amazing wow thank you nicole she's got bars for days so um here's what i'd say stories do matter but representation is not an end in itself you know um there's like this this um there's kind of there's this theory of media i think is like herbert marcus or someone like that um i'm probably misquoting but this idea that like actually in order to maintain control of a society you need to have kind of tokenistic representation of marginalized groups right within it um to feel like they've got something and actually there's something they have is meaningless it's like a marxist kind of like critique of like liberal media right like we're going to represent all these different points give them a couple of these lines exactly it's actually the structures which you are creating in are still oppressive they're still corrupting they're still capitalistic they're still unequal and all that kind of stuff now that is partly true that's but that's also not accounting for all the stories we're telling outside of those systems you know stories matter not just like when you go to see them at amc theaters they matter the stories you tell your kids they matter the stories you've inherited they matter in books they matter in regional theater the stories i'd say are bigger than just like corporate hollywood necessarily right i'm not going to kind of tie the value of storytelling purely to that arena but even within that arena of course it's meaningful having um you know um sinners up there smashing it in that way of course it's meaningful having black panthers but it's also meaningful having black panthers in that kind of way and and and that's because and again i say it's not an end in itself but that's because of what it inspires how it inspires people to see themselves differently and see other people differently i do think that what stories do and what our role as storytellers is is to constantly expand the scope of who is considered human and what is considered human i think stories matter for all those reasons right yes but what excites me more now rather than having a seat at the table is building my own table right and i think that's what i'm trying to do i'm trying to do that's what bait is for me that's what hamlet is for me that's what you know building my company is i guess like i i came into this kind of feeling like you know i want to stretch i want to stretch culture yeah really that's what i think stories have the ability to do like i said expand the scope of who and what is considered human i want to stretch culture and before i thought that was mainly about like me just popping up as bodhi rooker and venom and that kind of stuff stepping into the archetypes that already exist but actually there's so many that we need to create so many we gave actually about the idea of playing james bond after monkey man came out which is such a banger so impressive such an incredible film and they said to him like so damn after this you want to do james bond and he said you know like i don't want us all fighting over the same scraps i want us to tell our own stories as well i wanted to i wanted to add new um kind of things new i want to add like new archetypes to this kind of feast you know what i mean so no i don't want to be james want to be monkey man i thought that was such a beautiful way of kind of um getting out of this binary like this representation matters because representation is often about like being invited to take a seat at someone else's table but actually for me the thing i'm more interested in now is like i said building my own table i mean one of the things you talk about in the second episode shah supposed to go to a very fancy british museum event he's with his cousin zolfi which literally they then created an actual one the year after we made the show oh they they that that replicates a british museum like a version of the british met gala directly after oh we shot ours but there's a really powerful moment in it where there's a bunch of protesters outside of the event right and it's kind of this really great avatar it represents the community so dizzy i'm drinking water in a mug you're drinking water in a mug yeah this is classic yeah bro let me just get the brand and a shy mug he tells the protesters uh he walks by the protesters and his cousin says that you know you got to be outside with the community you got to be outside with your community take a picture with them and shah says we got to get in the room like i can't be with my masjid friends i got to get in the room change happens in the room and one of the things you've talked about is the power of getting in the room you've been in every room that you could possibly think of you work with every director you could possibly think of your discography is crazy your photography's nuts one of the things you've talked about in interviews is sometimes you go into the room but the room changes you what does that mean i think that access to power access to these rooms can be intoxicating in and of itself and that's what i mean by representation not being an access and your position not being an end in itself which is soon not being prime minister is meaningless it's about what are you doing when you're in that room how are you trying to change it how are you trying to bring other people through as well rather than trying to be the one you know so so that's kind of what i mean by that and i think often like you know the desire to have access and to have that position and have that favor can be so intoxicating that you will muzzle yourself you will censor yourself you will leave behind um your values and the version of yourself that you were before and that's partly what the show is kind of exploring is this idea of like how far do we travel from home in the hope of trying to represent home how far do we lose you and i think that's kind of what i mean by this idea of like how far do we go and how far do we go and i think that's kind of what i mean by this idea of like how far do we go and how far do we lose you through my movies to home is a lot easier than being there yeah you know what i mean and there is that because then you got to be home with your parents and you're like bro this is nuts actually you have to be with your family it's better to write fictional family so so then actually unpack real family but you know i mean i i guess there's there's um there's this kind of like representing is like a really um there's a nobility in that but it's also a kind of like way of not being present yeah you know the other paradox that's really beautiful that you unpack in the in the show is the desperation of celebrity so in episode 102 he goes into this fancy schmancy event okay and he's one of the only brown people there there's another surprise cameo by another amazing brown actor he's there but you can feel sha's desperation he's got to be he's got to say everything right and he's got his perfect speech plan but we've also felt like the desperation of our community that's outside the building why are you going in there man slow down you should be out here with us hey yo yo yo let's get a photo with you what's the problem bro if i get a photo take with them it's not it's not the right image i'm going for right now all right the real change happens in there we gotta get in there i mean what's your feeling on this whole like you know my where my character's like no the change happens in there happens in the room versus you should be out here protesting with us what's your take on that because the hilarious thing is we made the show and then directly after that we're like oh my god we're going to be out here with you after we made the show this actually happened they had a british museum version of the met gala mia was performing and lots of people forming and it was like indian themed wow and of course the british museum houses lots of kind of colonial artifacts that were kind of looted and stuff some sold some looted and there were protesters there yeah and people like came up and like tried to bum rush the thing so it was kind of crazy like the mirroring of art and life and i guess like what's what's your take on that whole thing of like being in the room versus yeah so we've both been to the met gala we were both there together yeah my take on it is the whole thing of being a public figure or celebrity is actually just a tragedy because the thing that you're given the gift the tofa that you're given is the opportunity to change your life the tragedy is that you try to change the life lives of others but sometimes you can't and you see those limitations so you see this thing that's really beautiful and life-changing and then you also can't get your dad to take his diabetes medication do you understand what i'm saying i mean so i can pay for my yeah my mom's knee surgery but i cannot get yeah my dad to you know uptake his protein diet but this dude will pound crispy cream donuts yeah he's coming to the premiere tonight i can't wait to see him man he's gonna if they have coca-cola he's going what you said goes to the heart of the show so it's a tragedy it's actually the mandate of social mobility the mandate of the immigrant child is leave us behind don't look back but also take us with you and it's like it's a paradox yeah it's a total paradox and you're kind of stuck in a kind of no man's land so i think that really goes to the heart of the show again it's like how far do you travel from home to try and represent change please or help home yeah you know and can you ever go back really you know what is that about and i think actually think that's something that people can relate to not just if you're like brown or child of immigrants you know so many people like leaving their smaller cities and towns moving to the big city it's to change their life to change their life and and to kind of try and um you know help the lives of the people they've left behind right yeah but can you ever go back can you ever bring them with you what is that you know that the mandate we've been handed is a kind of a lonely one so that you articulate beautifully in the show in the third episode bro i don't even think this is a fictional show this might be a documentary i'm watching the show and this is harrowing full-on family fights funny it's a comedy it's super funny comedy but trying to like yeah what i love about comedy is you can be more raw than you can in a drama you can be more ugly more honest more messy than you can in a drama yeah that's what i love about but at the end of episode three he gets into it with both of his parents his dad provokes him and says get out of here and he said why are you telling me to go why are you telling me to leave i left to go do something good why are you telling me to leave i'm trying to do something i'm not sitting here watching the fucking news and complaining i'm out here trying to change the world so that people don't treat me like a worthless stinking packy that scene that episode a lot of different things going into it first of all my parents always watch those indian dramas yes and pakistani dramas yes and often those india dramas you have a massive family occasion everyone is in their finery everyone is kind of there looking their best and some like terrible bust up happens publicly yeah and someone gets slapped and there's crash zooms and there's all this kind of stuff i actually wanted to like take from that and find what is the truthful version of that that both winks at that genre but it's actually about what is at the heart of that genre what is it like the real pain at the heart of it and i wanted to try and walk a line of both like with the whole show both dealing with kind of like something kind of heightened and comedic and playful but actually just gets to the to the to the root of that emotion so that's one thing i wanted to do kind of like just conceptually play with that that thing um like what's the because when i watch those things with my parents i'm like this is amazing but also it didn't feel real to me right i want to want it to be just as crazy but also real that was one thing i want to play with the other thing that went into it is like something about look the show partly is interrogating this idea of the the um arrogance and delusion of the representer i'm doing this to help you and change your lives why can't you be grateful it's like bro you ain't changing nothing for me right you're sorting you you you're getting paid you're getting pats on the back you're getting this that and the other yeah sure maybe i caught a little contact high off of like having your action figure once or twice but like bro your success is actually about allows them to ignore the rest of our reality that's a narrative that a lot of people have bro i've been told this yeah they're like oh you think you having this fancy schmancy youtube podcast i'm i was i'm benefiting from it yeah i'm like yeah you're cc'd on the email but my mom's like no you bcc us we're forgotten yeah yeah the sands of time you're left behind right there's there's truth in that i mean that's not just true for people who are artists but also like politicians right the idea of like when you go to another place to represent a group of people in your constituency you necessarily lose contact with them or you benefit them or yourselves right so it's that whole idea i wanted to kind of play with with that as well um because i felt both sides of it of that i've sometimes felt like man like this parent who thinks he's like like what do you think this is bro you're not in the you're not in the streets like i've felt it from that side to some people and i've also felt it from the other side like man i'm busting my ass to try and put my people on try and celebrate the culture and the people who come for you most of your own people that's crazy right i've seen both sides of that i don't have a view on it really i'm just an artist trying to make my work and make it as honest and messy as possible and that's how life is and you work it out as you go but i was really interested in that question you know i was really interested in that that paradox yeah um of that love hate you know yeah and even the the paradox of the platform shah represents the celebrity platform the one who made it through the door so he better use his platform to change the world but you also see the limitations of him being the only one in the room of how much and also the people and also the people who have not made it into the room and the people who have not made it into the room and the people who have not made it into the room often don't understand how um tentative and and um conditional your place in the room is right it's like bro you walked on that red carpet you could do what you want man it's like bro like yeah this ain't my house you know what i mean um so this is interesting kind of like again the gap between perception and reality that somebody once told me that the gap in your public and private self is the amount of shame that you carry right i think that's true i think that's true that's kind of what the that playground of shame is where the show is is kind of like um you know telling its story one of the interesting things that happens in the story too is shah has an agent and man shah has to do the one thing every celebrity hates brother i've done it you got two choices you rather do the notepad app or you do what i did you go to camera and during this holy month of ramadan may god may allah protect you from ever having to go to camera but a recurring theme and paradox that you talk about in the show is the public persona that we all have to take yeah and by the way every citizen and netizen has to go that's what i'm saying this is not a show about being an actor or a celebrity i couldn't care less if it was that show it's actually about something that we all go through we all have that public persona we all have that online avatar that instagram profile and we and it's totally at odds with our reality right right which is why we feel so lonely now because we're not actually kind of out there communicating connecting with the versions of who we are the version of who we want to be and how we want to be seen so that that gap is like is not exclusive to celebrities and actors we've got to get out of here so i'm going to do two things one of the things that i loved just so you know all of the things that you've done in all your projects but i loved about this project is you added kawali music to the genre to the form. Everybody gets a chance, hopefully, fingers crossed, as an artist to have your own show. You have, you end episode three with this very beautiful Cavalli track, 'Sacchia Orpila'. - It's one of my favorite. - Bro, it's beautiful. It moved me to tears. I watched it three times back. It's a beautiful song. And then I added it to my Spotify playlist. So it's kind of crazy that I have 'Sacchia Orpila' and then I have 'T-Pain' back to back. It's a very strange thing. - Same, similar things. - But talk about, but talk about what that means to you. Why does that matter to do, to add something so specific and beautiful? You're the one that put me onto it. - Yeah. I mean, partly it's just kind of honoring the reality and authenticity of the world, right? Like we wanted to create a world that musically was as specific as it was for me growing up in Wembley or whatever, right? And we actually ended up leaning into a very particular kind of South Asian music for most of the show, which is late seventies, early eighties, Pakistani and Indian psychedelic music. - Yeah. - And that was the kind of psychedelic funk that was used and disco. - Yeah. - So this is like, you know, India, Pakistan, like the heart of the hippie trail coming in from Afghanistan and stuff. So you had some like crazy acidy kind of psychedelic, funky, crazy, really playful, unexpected, subversive music. And that's kind of laced in throughout the whole show. But there's this moment of 'Kawali' that I wanted. I mean, just on a really basic level, like it hits me emotionally. It just hits differently to me. - Yeah. - Maybe because I grew up around it, maybe because, you know, it kind of goes back into my deep brain and my child brain, but also just because it is in the same way that like Fado, you know, that Portuguese tradition, it's music that is designed to just hit you emotionally with a level of like pain and poetry that I think is really hard to match. And the third reason, so like, yeah, it's authenticity. It's like my own personal connection to it. - Yeah. - Because I actually do want to put people onto this music. - Yeah. - You know? - You helped me understand it beyond just the cassette tape. No, but you unlocked the, its connection to our culture and heritage. Not only, it's almost like our gospel movement, music meets soul music, meets poetry. - Yeah, let me speak on it a little bit. So on our Sweatshop Boys album, Kashmir, we sampled a lot of 'Kawali' and we had interludes of 'Kawali' and specifically I wanted to use excerpts of recordings. - Yeah. - That sounded interestingly like rap music. So if you have a 'Kawali' singer like Aziz Mia, he's going double time and rapping like he's like barring it out. Like he's an MC. - Yeah. - And I kind of wanted to find a way, a lineage to trace my own artistry back to that wasn't purely appropriating from another tradition. I actually wanted to see how I could fuse and confuse it with like, you know, UK dance music, American rap and 'Kawali' and those kind of, that Holy Trinity is kind of what makes me up. You know what I mean? That's what I grew up listening to. And so I want to put people onto this music. And I think something that's really beautiful about it is again, it's about paradox. You know, 'Saqiyya Arpila' is a bartender, 'Pour Me Another'. - Yeah. - And it's a song about God and what is one of the most sacrilegious things you can do, drink alcohol as a Muslim. And yet it's about finding God in this, through intoxication, through losing your senses and actually through losing your way. - Yeah, it's beautiful. - You know, just being on your knees at the bar, 'Pour Me Another', and actually that's where you find God. So I think it's, yeah, like you said at the top, it's a music that, like the best poetry, embraces paradox, which is what the show is trying to do. - Riz Ahmed, ladies and gentlemen. ♪ ♪ - Have you subscribed to Lemonada Premium yet? You can listen completely ad-free and get access to exclusive bonus content you won't hear anywhere else. Like my discussion with Malala on how therapy changed her life, or my convo with Mel Robbins on how her 'Let Them' theory applies to parenting. 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