Riz Ahmed

0:08Bella Freud:Hi, come in.

0:15Bella Freud:Welcome to Fashion Neurosis, Riz Ahmed. Thank you for having me. Can you tell me what you're wearing today and why you chose these particular clothes? I'm wearing a leather bomber jacket. I'm wearing kind of a red purpley roll neck black trousers and I'm wearing my favorite shoes they're these shoes that are kind of made from Persian rugs they're recycled they cut up rugs and make shoes out of them the reason I'm wearing these clothes I think is because I usually have lots of different kinds of things to do over the course of a day so I'm usually kind of trying to thread a needle between looking smart enough to do some of them but feeling comfortable and casual enough to do other stuff and to be honest I wasn't thinking too deeply about what to wear but now that you're asking me I feel like it's a pretty fair reflection of kind of my vibe these days I feel like getting a bit older or look a bit more you know presentable grown up with these kind of roll necks and slightly less hoodies although i'll probably still wear too many hoodies if you ask my wife and i guess a jacket like this is just my comfort zone i owned a lot of leather bomber jackets and um i know i just was always obsessed with jackets as a teenager so i've got more jackets than socks you know um and t-shirts to there's nothing like a good jacket because it's such a good edit isn't it it's like it puts you together and then the the slight disrobing feels safe i find anyway it's like okay i can i can take it off now and i won't feel so exposed yeah maybe there's something about it feeling like armor um i always used to look forward to winter because then you can pull out the jackets yeah yeah but also because that's when the christmas sales were and so we used to go to bond street and selfridges and hit the christmas sales me and my friends or my brother and we'd swap all the price tags that's a brilliant idea and they we had this policy where you know we take a 300 pound top and like swap it with the 50 pound tag and the sales they were all handwritten and go look it's 50 quid which even then that was like you know trying to get the money together for that 50 quid t-shirt or whatever and they'd um they had this weird policy where they were like oh well that is a mistake but the tags on it like that so yeah all right you can have a 50 quid that's when we would pay for it um brilliant so um so yeah i i don't know i i feel like christmas is the and winter is that time of like i would get all my year's clothes from then because it's winter it'll be jackets um and yeah i used to look forward to that time always it's so much more fun designing a winter collection than a summer because just all that what's going to look on top good on top of this and then on top of that and it's it's such a yeah i guess also like when you get to layer different bits of clothes it's like you get to layer different parts of your personality you know if i if i was just wearing this roll neck that's saying something different i feel to having it with this bomber jacket yeah Not that I analysed it, but I'm thinking about it now.

3:58And I feel like in summer, it's more like you've got to choose the one thing that you are. And I feel like when it's a bit more cold and a bit more wet, you're allowed to have those layers. It's allowed to be more of a Russian doll. Yeah, it's a really good, yeah, I'll remember that.

4:17Bella Freud:That's exactly how I feel about it. You articulated it so well. and you're a multi-award winning actor a writer and a rapper and you care deeply about equality and fairness and people can often find themselves frustrated by not having the language they need and becoming didactic and frustrated and when did you first know that you had the gift of language at your disposal it's funny you should say that because i often feel that i slip into being didactic and i often feel that it's so hard to talk about not just equality or putting the world to rights but it's hard to almost talk about anything that you're passionate about without seeming too earnest do you know what I mean yeah and um finding the language finding the right way to communicate about something so it doesn't go to people's heads it goes to their hearts is something that I'm constantly searching for particularly when I'm writing music writing lyrics and at least I hope I've kind of gone on a bit of a journey there from writing ideas to writing feelings and sounds but i remember i remember um just being sent out of the classroom a lot for um arguing with with teachers and um kind of getting a sense that actually i'm being thrown out because i've won that argument you You know, or like, actually, I think I got them.

6:07So they had no last resort left other than to send me out of the classroom or something silly, you know. But I remember thinking, I'm kind of beating some grown-ups in arguments, you know. I probably was a showboating as well. I enjoyed doing that in front of the class, you know. I was very ADD and I was found it frustrating just being sat at the desk. But I think it was something to do with getting in trouble at school also made me realize the troublesome parts of me were um there was something that i had you know um so it's it's weird i guess in a way like my for that reason probably my communication or ability to articulate myself has always been tied up in questioning authority now i think about it you know discovering my ability to communicate was the same time it was tied up with challenging authority figures so it's probably why i'm still stuck on that same tip now no it's

7:11Bella Freud:so interesting that because language is such a power and i always remember this one time i had a stepfather who i hated and i'd done something wrong he caught me hitchhiking and and uh where hitchhike into i lived in the country so i'd come back from on the got the train and there was no bus so i was hitching home and suddenly there was he was there drag you know and and i just went on and on verbally attacking him i i remember i i could i said you're the essence of hypocrisy and then he hit me and I thought great I've got to him I mean that was the only time that happened but I really I I had that feeling of if you choose your words carefully they can they can be effective I mean obviously I was 12 then so I was fighting talk from a 12 year old Bella you've talked about what you call your obsessive perfectionism and I wondered what was the first instance of that that you can remember

8:31you know I'm going to mention something that's just come into my mind that it's probably not It doesn't maybe not sound directly related But when I look back I realise it is You probably think that I would say Oh you know I would keep redrafting my homework Until it was there Or keep redrafting my lyrics Until it You know I was happy with them Or I would keep my room very tidy Elements of those things Some of them are true The thing I'm actually going to say is I used to have a twitch As a kid I used to have a very elaborate kind of series of tics that I would perform it was almost like a pattern yeah from like my fingers to my face to my stomach muscles and my toes oh wow it was like you know sometimes you see kids or you see and you're like something's going on there like are they and maybe it was just my brain chemistry maybe it was an ADD thing maybe it was some elements of OCD as well I can be a bit of a neat freak I don't know but in a way I kept doing that same pattern in a kind of slightly obsessive way not constantly but throughout my day because I had this almost feeling that I haven't I haven't done it right such a weird thing to say isn't it but it's like I would keep retracing this kind of physical pattern in my body again and again kind of

10:06Bella Freud:searching for this feeling of having nailed it yeah slightly bizarre I know but when I look back at that I think there's a kind of weird obsessive perfectionism that underpinned that but of course underneath all of that probably an overwhelmed kid just dealing with complex feelings and brain chemistry and stuff and um you know a lot of kids have tics and these patterns and adults as well for that reason so yeah i wasn't expecting to say that but i guess that's the magic of being lying here on a couch and it almost feels like therapy i wasn't expecting to talk about that it's so interesting that because it's like uh i'm i'm interested in the physical side of resetting oneself more after like so much mental exploration.

10:58Bella Freud:And it's like a kind of reassuring of your neural system. And I notice it so much now. So what you're saying really resonates. I can see how especially as a young as a sort of young a child that it's like a kind of reassurance in in a way is that what it felt like yeah it's coming back to a home base but you're right it's also resetting it's like how do i deal with these overwhelming feelings in my body yeah and later on the way i would deal with them was through performance yeah you know whether that was in the classroom performing the troublemaker to get thrown out or whether it was on stage to get a round of applause and feel that wave of kind of validation feeling like a kind of reset or a safe place or you know writing lyrics and performing them um particularly I used to like drum and bass and jungle and I used to promote club nights that were mainly jungle and drum and bass and just because of how fast the tempo is like 180 beats per minute and it's allowed me to put all of that intense kind of I was almost like vibrating with like energy that was just spilling over and that became my my outlet for it so I feel like in a way performance is still a way for me to physically reset and and soothe particularly if you think about acting it's a kind of almost a spiritual reset not to be too pretentious about it but you're kind of leaving all right I'm not I'm gonna be someone else.

12:40Of course, the way you get there is always to lean into yourself and the truth of your experience and find those overlaps between you and the character. But there's something resetting and physically soothing about performance for me, for that reason. You know, to this day, I think the moment where I am the most completely at peace and zen are directly after i come off stage when i finish a gig and i come off stage performing my music i feel so blissed out and calm and almost empty so reset in a way i could like happily sit on a chair and just stare at a wall for like half an hour you know i just feel like the energy has moved through me completely so there is something like a physical reset yeah like you're in the eye

13:44Bella Freud:of the storm and it's all you're just grounded in the middle because you've you've also talked about code switching, including the clothes you wore. And I wonder what the first time you deliberately dressed to switch and what you wore. That would happen a lot, you know, at school, because I went to a private school that was about an hour away from where I grew up, and it was a very different kind of social setting and different places, you know. And From my own neighbourhood And There was this thing in particular I'll give you an extreme example We used to have these parties called daytimers So South Asian, Indian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi kids Often with traditional parents They And in particular for girls Weren't allowed out at night Or there was like A conservative kind of expectations around You know Dating and that kind of stuff So As teenagers In the 90s we would have our club nights in the daytime when you're supposed to be at school.

14:54So your parents wouldn't discover it. And they were called daytimers. And when they were daytimers, I would literally have that change of clothes. So I had my school uniform. And the interesting thing about the uniform is the tie, the house that I belonged to, like Gryffindor or whatever, Slytherin. The house that I belonged to was named Clive after clive of india the guy who colonized india so i'd be like representing clive house in sports and debates and no one gave it a second thought you know so i went from wearing this explicitly colonial kind of tie and suit to have the change of clothes in my bag and to go to the daytimers and for me that was green and white rebook classics usually because there was a reference to like Pakistani heritage in the green and white the way that a lot of the Sikh kids and boys wore orange and black for example it was like a whole kind of subculture and code to these things around identity off-key print Moschino you know um usually fake or V2 Versace usually fake from Wembley Market or something that I'd got um and I used to kind of just really yeah it was a full blown costume change and with it my the way i spoke would change um who i am would would change so in a way it was kind of where i saw i started acting you know before ever being in a school play it was just the total change in persona yeah from home to school to hanging out with mates

16:41Bella Freud:but I think a lot of people have a version of that because did you try to stand out or blend in as your code so weird it's a funny thing you know is that as much as I wanted to kind of be a part of a tribe I also wanted to stand out within that tribe you know so part of me was wanted acceptance but and and to fit in but part of me also always resisted that i kind of think now that's kind of that's still true you know the insider outsider thing for a lot of creative people for a lot of artists it's um i think it's an important place to be because i think you want to blend in enough to have access to have a window into worlds and new experiences but you want to have one foot outside it enough to be able to see it yeah to be able to to look at it um to draw from it to write about it and so i think that inside the outsider thing is something that i still cling to in a way like i'm i'm i've always been slightly allergic to like totally being in like any kind of scene you know yeah and yet i've always looked in slightly from the outside going oh i want to i want a clear tribe yeah i mean yeah that contradiction between wanting to be on the inside and outside I think that's always stayed with me yeah it's a good description so I was thinking about back in the days of punk which I caught the end of and I wanted to be part of but being part of meant distinguishing yourself within that too so you couldn't just dress like someone else or you'd be looked down on with you know everyone was so judgmental and critical, but it was kind of, if you could bear it, it was quite good training.

18:51It was so amazing about that movement, right? It's like the tribe is being as individual as possible.

18:59Bella Freud:Without being a twat somehow. Which is obviously... A fine line. Yeah, yeah. For the last 10 years, everything in American politics has basically revolved around one man. And as a political journalist who came of age during Donald Trump's rise in 2016, I've had a front row seat. I am officially running for president of the United States. It's going to be only America first. America first. Thousands of supporters of President Trump stormed the U.S. Capitol building. But is it possible to talk about politics without talking about Donald Trump? That's the question I'm going to ask in our new show from Vox.

19:43Bella Freud:The idea of like a post-Trump or not exactly Trump-focused show can exist because he's not really driving any agenda items. It really does feel like so reactive. You know, I think this Iran thing is also going to cause a big split in the GOP. So far, it doesn't among like people who say they're MAGA voters are still with Trump. But like for the first time, you see on a major issue, open opposition from the start of this war. I'm Estet Herndon and welcome to America Actually.

20:10Bella Freud:And do you remember the first piece of clothing that you longed for as a child and felt that somehow would change things? And that I ended up getting or that I didn't get? Doesn't... I mean, in an ideal world, you'd get it, but often one wouldn't. You know, a jacket, again, a leather jacket that meant everything to me was one that I had made in Pakistan. I didn't visit Pakistan a lot growing up, you know, went a handful of times. But I think when I was about, when I was 18, I think it may have been even the time of the Matrix coming out. It's about 2000, something like that, 2001. Went to the leather market in Garaji And I had a leather jacket made up from scratch Kind of a one piece almost With no join in it Colorless Gurda style collar Shirvani style collar Three quarter length Leather trench coat It's very matrix isn't it And I just wore that Just Oh my god I wore the shit out of that jacket um it was kind of like in a way trying to bring it all together just becoming an adult and it was like this is like a kurta it's like a shivani it's the matrix it's like this leather jacket it's a bit like cool a gangster i thought and i remember i would wear my the thing i would always wear it with my club nights that i started promoting around then was a white berry oh wow i think it was a women's berry that's so cool and then a kurta like a you know like a kurta top that i cut with scissors and dyed and then jeans back then it was all boot cut jeans um with nike airbursts and that was just like my thing i was like this is me this is my character this is the thing i'm gonna be when i perform this is like it's this exact mix you know um and i think that jacket was just kind of like the my arm i was on my superhero cape when i was performing it was like i loved that jacket i don't know where the hell it is and where did the beret come from because that's the beret came from a friend of mine she i think she wore it to one of my nights and I was like I love this berry and like I think jokingly when I was on the mic I took it off her head and put it on and then she was like it looks good and you should keep it that's so good I kept it for way too long my white berry as well imagine the inside just battered sweat grunge from raving and yeah it's incredible how much uh you know how symbolic it is because anyone who wears a berry they immediately look like you know kind of cool intellectual what do you know it's not it's not very i guess you could call it a flat cap it was more like a kangol flat cap right right about it yeah but i don't know what the it was a mixed signal i was giving off for sure but maybe that was a point maybe it was simple as that yeah i saw um i was watching this documentary about francis ford coppola the other day and he He was so beautifully dressed and on one of the days, his look, he had a kind of pale, like an ivory-coloured suit with a black beret on.

23:51Bella Freud:I just thought it was so elegant and stylish. And so, you know, this sort of allusion to, you know, Jean-Paul Sartre and beatniks and stuff. God, it was strong. It was really good. You know, it's interesting when I'm filming, I like to not have to think at all about what I'm wearing. I never like put on an outfit to, to go and shoot. In fact, for years, for probably way too long, sounds gross. I just wore the same exact tracksuit for throughout the whole of shooting the night of, which was like eight months, every single day I would get up and put on that tracksuit and go to hair and makeup in that.

24:37and then get into my costume i kind of wanted to erase the idea of me putting on any other identity or any kind of yeah that i wasn't putting any creative energy into creating a riz persona that day that that was just its total afterthought and all my energy is going into the other thing and it's still a bit like that yeah i am the guy who turns up in the exact same thing for like two months and people are like i hope he washes that

25:08Bella Freud:I'll say that I do, but I don't. Loads of men, though, have the same clothes, like tons of pairs of the same jean and the same shirt. I don't. I wish I could, for hygiene reasons, I wish I could tell you they're all different versions of the same thing. It's literally the same thing. Oh, that's sweet. And what was the first thing you wore to be consciously attractive to somebody? That's funny. I must have been going on a date when I was like a teenager or something. And we didn't have, I shoplifted this jumper from Selfridges, this D &G roll neck, like a thick woolen. It was beautiful. And it said, importantly for me back then, Dolce and Gabbana along the bottom.

26:04So it was there. you knew that it was that but it was kind of subtle and um and i knew i had this you know i was gonna meet this girl and i yeah i went i nicked it basically and um and i wore that we went to the cinema you know so it was like probably didn't see it didn't appreciate that it was branded either. But I remember that. And I remember that actually feeling quite like armor. You know, it wasn't like a thin roll neck like this. It was quite, you know, it was kind of thick. And yeah, I wore that for, I loved that. Sorry, D &G.

26:55Bella Freud:Because when you collected your Oscar for your short film, the long goodbye you wore the color burgundy and I wondered and actually today your roll neck is sort of a burgundy color and I wondered whether you have any associations to that color yeah I don't know if it's a genuine association or if it's something that I kind of picked just to have a favorite color but growing up my big brother's favorite color was blue so I automatically he thought mine has to be red and I guess I just like cultivated that yeah idea to the point where now I kind of feel like yeah that's a thing for me but maybe as I'm getting a bit older and I'm mellowing out color I really love wearing is pink oh I really love pink and um I feel like when I wear red it's expressing red energy so i don't have to i feel like i can sit back a bit more maybe if i'm wearing red whereas if i'm wearing green or beige i probably feel like i have to sit forwards a bit more with my energy be a bit more forthright i don't know i'm just kind of riffing in real time but there is an element of that like the clothes are doing the work for you You know So if you're wearing A crazy outfit You can like Stand quietly In a corner of the room It's that kind of feeling Yeah That's so interesting Yeah Gosh And Yeah Because I was wondering When I was a child I lived in Morocco And I I really wanted my mum To wear a veil Like all the other mums A veil is in a niqab Or just a hijab A full niqab Well in Morocco The women used to wear a jalaba with a with a veil across their nose so you could just see their eyes wow okay and i and you wanted your mom to wear i wanted my mom to wear that and i wondered um how do you feel about the different dress codes for muslim women what i love is that there's a range of choices for people to be able to make you know i mean my wife um has written about this yeah um and it's really you know for someone like me to just listen and understand the range of views and opinions i think the most important thing is that as we're discussing on this podcast what we wear is so much of our choice right and i'm a big supporter of people dressing however they choose to you know how much of themselves they're covering up or not i don't think that's anyone else's business really personally.

29:42Bella Freud:No, I suppose from living there and experiencing that, I agree completely. You know, it's very different being told how you have to dress to choosing how you want to dress. Yeah. And you've talked about the random selection searches at airports when you were returning home from winning the silver bear for your role in the Michael Winterbottom film, The Road to Guantanamo, and you were detained and you were verbally aggressed and denied access to a phone. And I wondered, how do you deal with deliberate provocation?

30:25You know, it's interesting. Deliberate provocation is literally, it's someone trying to bait you into a reaction isn't it and it's such a fine line i think between standing your ground and reacting you know reaction i think is in a way your agency's been taken from you yeah you know someone else has set the terms of the interaction when we just react and if someone's deliberately provoking you then It's even more true Right They got what they wanted And my dad always has this philosophy There's a Farsi saying Which is Which is the best response to ignorance is silence And I'd like to get to that level of Zen and mellowness Put it in God's hands I'm not coming down to that level But sometimes I feel like that ends up being turned the other cheek in a way that is also unhelpful so I know how do you respond rather than react to be honest I don't know it's still something I'm working out in day-to-day interactions even um you know we all get rubbed up the wrong way or triggered by all kinds of things and trying to honor that feeling without letting that feeling take over you.

31:54I think it's a lifelong journey. I've got zero advice for people on that. I'm just trying to work that out for myself.

32:02Bella Freud:I think even delineating, responding, and reacting is half the battle because suddenly you retain your agency by remembering that you can respond rather than react. And then that's already such a, I mean, that's something, something to come from rather than losing it, which is so demoralizing as well. And, but it's, yeah, it's a really good, it's great. It's a great thing to remember that. And because you described what you called three necklaces of stereotyping and breaking out from that. And working with Chris Morris on Four Lions has seemed to an unlikely route to mainstream. But he heard your song, Post 9-11 Blues, which is such a witty song.

33:02Bella Freud:And what are the three necklaces? I'm actually not sure exactly what they are. So what was this that I say? I'm quoting back you. This is something from quite a long time ago. You talked about the roles. I can talk more broadly about stereotypes and stuff. if that's yeah it was like I probably won't I'll probably fail to remember what you're quoting and need to be honest you describe these things as three necklaces as like the first one of being cast as something a sort of stereotypical cliche of how people think that they can use you as a as an actor right right right you know working in it as a well I'll respond maybe a kind of broader level which is i feel like no one reads as neutral very few people do right blonde hair blue eyes

34:07beautiful has its own baggage someone in this body looks like this it has its own baggage You, the way you look Some baggage is a lot heavier And a lot more burdensome than other baggage 100 % I'm not saying everyone's got a cross to bear And it's the same Particularly in our culture, right? There's a kind of value placed on certain appearances of others But no one reads as neutral And I kind of feel like one of the most exciting And important roles of telling stories is to really play with those preconceptions that people come to a story with. You know, if you can flip someone's thinking, if you can flip their perspective or their perception from the start of them seeing a story to the end, I think that's what we're here to do.

35:03You know, break down those walls and have them see the world differently. Ideally see themselves in someone who's nothing like them. you know and so that's something that i always enjoy doing whether it's something like four lions where it's like these demonized and completely misguided criminal young men but also kind of being like dumb and silly and playful yeah and you kind of like warming to them that's interesting just a flip of perception flip of preconceptions similarly with like hamlet we've got now it's like people have their preconceptions around shakespeare it looks a certain way it feels a certain way people have might have their preconceptions about what a majority you know south asian cast what kind of film they might make but to put those two together say we're doing Hamlet we're doing it with this cast we're doing it in this setting modern London doing it as a thriller you know these that's what I just really enjoy I get a kick out of that I get a kick out of acknowledging that people come into the room with certain preconceptions and thinking all right great we've got them already you know how can they not see this coming how can we flip this in some way yeah because that's what excites me i i the hamlet i've only seen the trailer

36:36Bella Freud:because it's not out at this moment in time and um it's got so much tension and i i read that you um that the director said i don't like shakespeare and he and he got rid of every scene that didn't feature Hamlet. And I remember when I was a teenager thinking, why am I so unable to do anything? I've got Hamlet syndrome, which is where you perpetually, I had this sort of image of him perpetually walking on the castellations of his castle, never going one way or the other and sort of being consumed with indecision and this hamlet is so tense and seems so pacey almost like a thriller and um how did you make it so that you're on the edge of your seat watching it yeah it's interesting i think a lot of people feel like shakespeare isn't for them they feel like it belongs to someone else yeah i always always say shakespeare isn't dead he's been kidnapped you know there's a very by the establishment by intellectuals there's a very traditional way of doing it that understandably a lot of people feel on the outside of i have yeah i dread shakespeare generally yeah and so this film that we've made i think hopefully blows that open for people you know because ultimately these stories stick around not because it's just a tradition because it's on the GCSE syllabus, but because they're really powerful stories.

38:10They're drawn from deep, deep myths that don't just belong to Shakespeare. Actually, he didn't make up almost all of his plays. He didn't make up the story. They're drawn from ancient, deep myths that belong to all of us. So if the heart of these stories belong to us all, why should the most famous version of them, Shakespeare's, only belong to a small group of people? Why should it be this dusty museum piece? and actually a story like hamlet i feel it's about right now we need this story we need this story because it's an ancient myth at its heart that deals with the situation we're going through right now so we can we can draw on its wisdom we can allow it to exorcise what we're feeling and when i say hamlet's about right now i think at its essence hamlet is about someone grieving the illusion that the world is a fair place yeah that's how we're feeling right now yeah it's about someone being gaslit about that it's about someone realizing that they're part of the problem as well yeah that's how we all feel we're waking up to the reality of how screwed up things are all the pretense has been dropped the mask has come off it's all shameless and out in the open yeah and actually people are carrying on like it's fine it's normal and you look in the mirror and you look at your own actions you're like i'm just kind of going along with this that's how hamlet feels that's how we all feel right now so i'm a big believer in kind of almost doing a heist on these crown jewels at the heart of our culture you know and taking them and trying to democratize them and present them in a way where everyone can connect to it because it's just it's beautiful powerful necessary stuff you know hi i'm bernie brown and i'm adam grant and we're here to invite you to the curiosity shop a podcast that's a place for listening wondering thinking feeling and questioning it's gonna be fun we rarely agree but we almost never disagree and we're always

40:06Bella Freud:learning that's true you can subscribe to the curiosity shop on youtube or follow in your favorite podcast app to automatically receive new episodes every thursday because you you're a very successful rapper as well as all the other amazing things you do and um you said once how studying Shakespeare at drama school influenced your rap lyricism and I wondered if you had any couplets that struck you as the perfect rap lyrics from Shakespeare yeah you know there's so I won't say a particular couplet, it's perfect rap, but there's a pair of lines that I love and that always grounds me. At the end of the story of Hamlet, he's been spending this entire play going, what do I do?

41:00Do I do this or do I do that? Do I fight back against injustice, even if it might kill me? Or do I just go along with it and just suffer all of this? He's really confused and doesn't know what he should do And by the end of the play, he gets to a place of surrender He gets to a place of, I think, acceptance Which is the heart of every spiritual tradition Islam means surrender Taoism, Tao Te Ching, Wu Wei, swimming with the current All of the spiritual traditions talk about surrender And Shakespeare boils it down to these two lines which is there's a divinity that shapes our ends rough hue them how we will there's a divinity some higher power that shapes our ends how things shall turn up turn out in the end rough hue them how we will to rough hue something is to take a piece of whatever and try and hue it try and carve it but our carving is always going to be rough you know the end the point of it is going to be out of our hands and it's something that when i get to in my head about get too anxious worried about trying to control outcomes trying to solve situations my personal or professional life there's something very humbling about that that's yeah just like and it doesn't mean give up it means you've got to hue them you're gonna do the sweaty work of carving these big chunky pieces of wood but just know like it's not gonna turn out how you want it's kind of out of your hands And I think that's true for every element of life, you know.

42:50Do the work, have a purpose, but hold that humility of knowing you're not in control.

42:56Bella Freud:Yeah. So those are two lines that I think are beautiful to live by. Yeah, really is sort of remembering that the outcome isn't, it doesn't control how you deliver. is so freeing if you can remember that occasion. Well, for myself, speaking for myself. How are you doing at remembering that? Well, I remind myself a lot. So that really helps, you know. Do you find that the stuff that you do that's for yourself rather than what you think people want from you is usually stuff that connects more. I think when I really want something, that's when I kind of think, okay, you can put the work in. You can't insist on the outcome because you may have missed something.

44:00Bella Freud:And then that's, at least it helps me to do the preparation right. And then sometimes the outcome isn't how I'd imagined it, but it's good. And that I find really gives me confidence in my resolve rather than being too kind of attached to willpower and forcing it. And I suppose as a woman, you have to, you're always negotiating that because people don't expect you to demand and insist. They're immediately kind of less receptive to that. Yeah. But at the Al Style Awards, which we were both at last year, and you made this incredible speech dedicated to Gaza and also to your wife, Fatima. And I wondered how being in love has changed you.

45:06It's a thing of control in a way, isn't it? When it's just you, it's just your life. For better and for worse, less of a negotiation. But that's what connection is about. Connection is about teaching you that you don't have control. Energy flows both ways. And I think that's been good for me in all kinds of ways. Everything from like, you know, the basics of my wife's messy. I'm really tidy. I think it's been good for me to let go of that. I think it's taught me surrender in a practical sense in how I conduct my life. But also emotionally, you know, someone else has my heart.

45:55Bella Freud:Yeah. you know in their hands as well as the other way around it's made me probably more sensitive um a bit more vulnerable and um and honestly just extremely grateful you know that there's this person who's willing to go on this journey with me you know because it seems from the little bits that I've read that you have a real partnership in your both in your romanticism together and also your creative paths that you're so you just there's such a sort of joyfulness around you as a couple like you're these two sparkling people exchanging you know heart and mind and that is so effective it's so it really means a lot to see that in people and it's very encouraging and you've been photographed by some of the great fashion photographers including Jürgen Teller and I wonder which photographer you think makes you look sexiest I have no idea about that you know I can't really look at photos myself and never think like oh I look great I don't feel that i i really struggled to look at photos of myself i don't have the same issue with acting watching films back or anything like that not that i make a habit of it but if i watch it you watch it once i'm not kind of fixating and projecting because things are happening it's in motion the story is kind of carrying you along photos i i would say if i can find a photographer that can make me look sexy yeah um that makes me feel that that I'd be very happy I guess there's one photographer there's one photo of me that I think did capture me in a moment that was very unguarded and that photo ended up being put in the National Portrait Gallery oh great and that's by Sharif Hamza and it's interesting you know I don't think this necessarily works this way, but he kind of grew up not far away from me.

48:23I didn't know him before we met on the shoot, but he kind of got me.

48:30Bella Freud:Yeah. Yeah. He understood who I was, where I was coming from. He'd walked a similar tightrope in his life. And, um, he took a photo of me. I think it was for the New York times magazine. It's like 2019 or 2018, something like this.