For Riz Ahmed, Life is a Spy Thriller

0:05Riz Ahmed is an actor, rapper, and movie producer. You may know him from Star Wars Rogue One, The Sound of Metal, which got him nominated for an Academy Award, or the TV show Bait. This conversation was filmed at our Journal Live event in Los Angeles last month. You can watch the interview on Spotify. It's got some fun moments you might want to see. Hey, everyone. How you doing? Riz, I'm so glad you are here to join us for this live taping of The Journal podcast. I'm really glad to be here. We've got to do one more thing. Are you ready? Let's do it. Are you guys ready? Amazing. All right, cue the theme.

0:50Live from the El Rey Theater in Los Angeles, welcome to The Journal, our show about money, business, and power. I'm Jessica Mendoza. Coming up on the show, Riz Ahmed on making Hollywood work for him.

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2:22I'm absolutely psyched you're here. Thank you so much. I have so many questions for you about the movie business, your career, your thoughts on storytelling. So let's get into it. Let's get into it, but also just say, that is a tune, is it not? That slaps. I'm going to remix that. Thank you. On behalf of our engineers and the people who composed it, thank you. But I do want to start with Bait, which is your TV show on Amazon Prime. Six episodes where you play Shah Latif, an actor not unlike yourself, it seems like, who gets an audition to play the next James Bond. And it's amazing, but it also kind of messes up his life.

3:02I found it very funny, very nuanced, had a lot of feelings watching it. And one of the themes of the show, you tackle a lot of different things in it, but one of the themes of the show is the challenges that an actor of color faces when he tries to move out of the stereotype. Of all the characters you could have wrapped the story around, why James Bond? You know, the James Bond element came quite late in the day. The show is really not actually about being an actor or about Hollywood or even James Bond. It's about self-love and how so many of us can look for love in all the wrong places, Look for it in the validation and the likes and the comments of strangers, particularly in an age where we're all kind of continuously performing a public version of ourselves online.

3:51Or on stage, as we're doing right now, maybe a little bit. Exactly. None of these clothes are mine. For example, I'm a chaotic mess and I'm pretending like I know what I'm talking about. I'm reading off an autocue in the back. and so there is this kind of gap between who we are and how we like to be seen and that's what the show is about um and so then if it's a show about someone who wishes they were somebody else who wishes they were decisive and desirable and accepted and successful and an alpha male what's the perfect symbol for that it's james bond so he serves as a symbol of aspiration for somebody who wants to be anything other than themselves um but there is another kind of layer to it and maybe we can talk about that later.

4:35I knew when I was making this show that I wanted it to be in the playground of genre. Jordan Peele said something that stayed with me when he made Get Out. He said, in his mind, being black in America felt like being in a horror movie. That's why he made Get Out. And in my mind, being brown in the West feels like you're stuck in a spy thriller. You did not ask to be in. And so I wanted the show, this character's journey, even though it was about self-love, to be infused with the surveillance, the idea of being looked at but not really seen, the idea of torn allegiances, identities, mistrust. I wanted that to be in it.

5:18So when we landed on Bond, it did double duty. It was both a symbol of aspiration and a nod to this genre I really wanted to explore. And when you say spy thriller, who is the brown person playing in this thriller? Well, that's a great question, you know, because sometimes in your own mind, you walk into a room and you're the hero of a story. I've learned not everyone always sees me that way, shockingly. Sometimes we walk into a room and, you know, in someone else's mind, you may not be the hero of the story. And so that's another kind of duality. You know, again, how we like to be seen, how we are seen in a way we might not like to be.

5:59But both of those things are projections. Really, what I'm trying to bring through is how do we really feel authentically? And how can we learn to take off the mask? Are there a mask of our own making or one that someone puts on against our will? So it's a show about authenticity and trying to own your messy self. Yeah. And I think you were really able to achieve that. We were just talking about it backstage. Really incredible show. You guys should check it out. But listeners of our show might know this because we've made an episode about it. It's interesting that James Bond is the figure that you wind up with.

6:36For decades, the creative rights to the film franchise was owned by the Broccoli family. Like the vegetable, yes. And they are very famous for being very protective of that IP. Was it difficult to get the rights to use James Bond for this? Yeah, it was like, we're in the riot's room. We wanted to do a show about all this stuff and self-love and identity and ambition. We're like, what's the symbol? We've nailed it. We've solved the Sudoku puzzle. It is going to be James Bond. High five. Oh, man, how are we going to get the rights to this? This is never going to happen. And we were told by everyone it would be impossible.

7:14You know, rightly so. Barbara Broccoli has protected and shepherded this franchise over many generations. Her family has. and I thought if there's just a 1 % chance we can get this, we have to go 100 % all in. So we did, we wrote it around the concept even though we had no sign off on it. I reached out, went for brunch with her, gave her the scripts, talked her through it and she got it. Turn on the charm? Well, she got it, she got it. She understood that this isn't really about Bond. It's more about this feeling about how life can feel like one big audition and we're always performing a version of ourselves.

7:50Would you ever actually want to play James Bond? I mean, even pretending to do it seems to have created a lot of conversation. I mean, it seems like there's support. There are three people in the room that I would love to see that happen.

8:10You know, I think I can safely say that I have burned every possible bridge to that ever happening after making this show. But I think, yes, certainly there was a moment in time when I would have loved to have done that. And I think actually part of the reason we use that is because there was a period of time for me when my name was being mentioned around the casting for James Bond, along with everyone else and their dog. If you're a British actor under the age of 90, your name is mentioned, okay? So it's not that big a deal. But it did kind of confront me with a bit of a question. which is like do I want to dedicate my life to stepping into other people's stories or do I want to tell my own?

8:58And for better or for worse, I've kind of been very excited and inspired to tell stories that feel personal to me and stories that I feel like we haven't seen before. And so for whatever it's worth, I want to kind of pursue that. And I want to kind of like celebrate and create new archetypes alongside James Bond. Yeah. You know? Which we'll get back to that in just a second. But I did want to ask you, I don't know if you guys can tell he's from the UK. Maybe the accent gave it away. But you have worked in the UK's robust film industry. You've worked here in LA. What are the big differences that you've experienced experienced in the industries in these two continents, really?

9:47It's interesting, you know. I guess I'll start by saying increasingly it feels like a globalized industry, you know. I know that our show was a British set show. Yes, very much. And yet we did the writer's room here in Los Angeles. It was commissioned out of the LA office, but then produced by the UK office of Prime Video. So it feels increasingly like the lines are being blurred. and that's how capital moves, right? I guess a big difference that I've found is that when you're a smaller fish like the UK, I think you have no choice in a way but to lean into the hyper-specificity of your subcultures, of your experience.

10:36I think there's a reason why we've had these really breakout voicey shows, whether it's Fleabag or I May Destroy You or Baby Reindeer. and of course you have those in the in the u.s as well um but i kind of feel like when you don't have all the resources in the world when you are not setting yourself a challenge of trying to appeal to everyone in a way that i think a lot of the time things commissioned that the u.s can you know have that that um consideration in mind you you actually have sometimes more of a chance of like breaking out because it's so left field it's so specific it's so particular and i think that's something that I find like very liberating about you storytelling in the UK despite considerably less resources often um so I think that's that's one thing that's interesting it's almost like uh creativity is bred from the necessity of having to work with less I think so yeah I think there's one reason why Iranian cinema has been so incredibly strong you know comparatively compared to its resources and it's like access to global markets like um it's limitations, right?

11:40It's how limitations can like spur creativity, I think. It's interesting you bring up resources. You know, you come out with bait after years of success in Hollywood and the film industry. You've done a lot in the last couple of decades. But I've noticed that since Venom in 2018, where you, you know, played the villain Carlton Drake opposite Tom Hardy, you haven't actually been in another like big budget blockbuster. Is that right? You make me feel really bad about that. No, no, no. And I mean, I ask that. This is therapy. Let me just recline here. It all started when my mom. Tell me why. Why are you choosing?

12:22No, but it is, I am curious, is there like a reason for that? Was that a question of opportunity or was it a purposeful decision that you made? Are you at a point in your career where it's like, I get to choose the projects that I wanna make? No, it's a valid question. I'm being silly. I guess I was at a place in my kind of creative journey around there, around 2017 or so, where I felt like I had been on this mission. However high-minded, pretentious or misguided it was, I felt like I had to justify a career in the arts, either to my parents or to myself, this idea of like stretching culture. Like, I want to try and stretch culture.

13:04I really and I actually believe even more passionately now than I did then the stories have the power of doing that of taking you to a world you've never met before been to before and recognizing yourself in a stranger. That's how we stretch culture. That's what story can do. And so I had it in my mind that the way of doing that was for me to pop up in these like big stories. Right. And like change the furniture in these pre-existing rooms. and I got to a point where I realized like what if I build my own rooms what if I tell my own stories I suddenly kind of started to feel that like there's another way of stretching culture and that and that's by kind of offering something very personal and specific and new and so I I really kind of felt like I was running out of excitement and steam, kind of putting on the mask for other people.

14:05And I wondered what it would be like if I started to take the mask off and create from a much more personal place, whether that's Mogul Mowgli or The Long Goodbye or even Sound of Metal was a very personal project in many ways, and especially Bait and Hamlet. and so I wanted to kind of experiment with that and see where that might lead me and it's been very fulfilling for me being able to share that with people. I mean, did it feel like you were being, like moving the furniture around in those bigger blockbuster rooms, did it feel like you were being boxed in in some way, in a way that's different when you're the one kind of creating the room?

14:40I think there's some truth in that as well, yeah. I think that, you know, being able to kind of make the decisions not just around casting but around what kind of story we tell how we tell it you know what kind of genre exists in those are things that um i felt like i was bumping up against them you know particularly stories that spoke to the specificity of my experience to often be relegated to a kind of like dry like documentary realism but it's i want to do is a comedy. I want to do a spy thriller comedy about my neighborhood of Wembley in Northwest London, you know? And so, yeah, I think it kind of afforded me more freedom to play and really explore the stuff I'm genuinely interested in rather than be wedded to the place that other people might put me.

15:29Do you worry about whether that specificity will resonate? No, not really. No. No, no, no. I mean, I used to, but when I think about it, I actually think things resonate more if they're more specific, right? Like there's nothing more specific than being the queen of England, right? And yet - I don't know if anyone else watches The Crown and goes like, I am the queen of England right now. Like I feel you, Alison, I get it. Only they knew what it was like to run a kingdom. And you're just suddenly, you're relating to it. And it's, I think what people respond to is a kind of honesty. Yeah. You know, if something feels specific, it feels authentic, it feels honest, that's what resonates.

16:14And, you know, a couple of shows that were really in front of my mind were shows like Fleabag and I May Destroy You and Atlanta when I was making Bait, and they're so specific. You know, I got into, I fell in love with movies through Martin Scorsese's Goodfellas. That's so specific. I've never been an Italian mobster. Yeah, I may, yeah, one day. But that's something that you connect with because of its specificity. And that's a lesson that I've kind of learned and I believe in passionately. After the break, Riz Ahmed on the challenges facing Hollywood.

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18:03So when we talk about Hollywood right now, one thing that we've covered a lot on our show is sort of the industry and the challenges that it's been facing, right? There's fewer people going to theaters, the rise of online platforms that are competing with eyeballs that could be going to traditional TV and film. There's AI, there's jobs disappearing here in LA and Hollywood, entertainment companies merging, there's this huge focus on like existing IP, all of these things. So when you tackle a project like Bait or your recent film Hamlet, which is this modern reimagining of the Shakespeare play, what are the business considerations that you think about when you do this?

18:44Do you think about them at all? I think different projects demand different considerations, actually. I think some things are designed to work at the box office, or at least there's a hope that they will. There's other things that kind of have a long tail. If you think of a film like Hamlet, I have every confidence that film will stick around. It'll be there in the ether in 20 years because contemporary Shakespeare adaptations have that kind of long tail the way that Kenneth Branagh does from 1997. We haven't had one for 25 years. And so that's the idea behind that, for example. with something like Bait, you know, there's a real hope that it does kind of break through in the pop culture and is received well in the way that, you know, touch wood so far has been.

19:28And so I think that the idea that there's one definition of success for a project or for any individual is that leads us to madness. And so I try and kind of be aware of, try and define success for myself going into it but can I be honest like the most the things that end up being most successful in my experience for me are the ones where I'm not making it aimed at an end result of success the success is something about being true to the material being as honest as possible with Bay it was like how do we play with as many different genres as possible. Episode two is a James Bond episode, episode three is a Bollywood soap opera, episode four is a Richard Linglater's Before Sunrise Walk and Talk.

20:22That's our definition of success. How can we pull that off? More often than not, yes, you've got to have a business awareness, a producerial awareness, you need to be realistic about the landscape and how we will meet the public. But if I try and emphasize the end result in my definition of success too much, it usually it totally does not work. I have to kind of frame success more intrinsically around the process. And it's like that idea, if you dance like no one's watching, that is the best dancing, you know? And I'm with you there. I mean, even with the making of a podcast, right? Like we want to make the best show we can possibly make and not think too much about the profit and whether we're going to be able to sell ads and all of those things.

21:05But we talked about resources before. I mean, you need those resources. and for resources to be awarded to you, you also have to be able to prove that you can make some kind of commercial or financial argument for the projects that you're making. So I guess I just wanted to push back a little bit on that and say, you know, how important is it really? How do you balance that artistic integrity? I think it is a balance, but I think that the way to bring those two things together is like, is really thinking about this idea of the gut. You know, people say like, trust your gut. If it's exciting to you as a topic, it will probably be exciting to this audience and these people who follow you and love your material.

21:41And Steve Jobs would often speak about the focus group of one. And it's like if you have that kind of excitement, if something's making you lean forwards and sit up in that kind of way, you might not be able to articulate it coherently to someone else to give them that bug. But if it's in your body, if it's exciting you in that way, there's got to be something to it. You can't be that much of an alien compared to everyone else. If there's something in it that is feeding you, it will feed other people. So I am increasingly a believer in like following your obsessions and following your gut. And then, of course, surrounding yourself with, you know, hard-nosed individuals who are going to say that will never sell.

22:22So that's the balance. You outsource the balance. And listening to them, too. Totally. Yeah, absolutely. We've been talking about this in the context of projects. but you yourself, as a success in this industry, you're not just an actor, you own a production company, you are a rapper. Do you feel like to be successful in Hollywood or in the entertainment business right now, you have to be able to do multiple things? Yeah, it's an interesting question. It's certainly not a strategic decision that I've made trying to do different things. It's a kind of expression of my own creative curiosity and my own identity crisis, you know, that I do these different things.

23:08I do think increasingly we have to wear different hats. For example, I think producers have to be very involved in marketing now. And producers are often also creators. So there used to be a world where the creative would do the creating and then they'd kind of seal themselves off from the dirty work of selling something. And now I think there has to be a complete through line. A narrative through line from the inception of a project to all the way when you're selling it and marketing it the whole way through. I do think that there is a sense in which we're all having to cover more bases, whether we'd like to or not.

23:45At least for myself, I think it is very additive. Yeah. It helps. Yeah, I think so. So I think it helps me creatively, you know, to have one foot in music and have one foot in writing and acting. Because it means when we're making a show like Bait, we say, how do we bring this to life in a different way? The soundtrack can do so much work for us narratively. So I don't know if it's like necessary, but I do feel like it's additive and we're increasingly being asked to wear more hats. Right. I mean, just before this, we were already doing like a social video that we had planned as part of that. You know, you're doing all of the things you're trying to check all of the boxes in some ways.

24:32But it's nice when you didn't necessarily plan it and that it was organically coming from something that was your own creative drive. And I think people smell that. I think people smell when something's authentic or not. Right. Essentially. Right. Well, in the business today, where do you think the opportunities are? Like who are doors opening for and who are doors closing for? yeah I mean that's a huge question um I I guess I I feel like um

25:06people people somebody asked me the other day like what advice would you give young people in the industry right what advice would you give young people who are coming up and I guess I felt like I need their advice I feel like the landscape is so different right now so massively different that actually what you what we're seeing is like a young cohort and a young generation of storytellers that are really doing it their own way and playing by their own rules whether that's on Instagram or TikTok or on YouTube and they're really um kind of creating these new paradigms and when I see that I'm kind of um I don't know I'm kind of really inspired by them I'm actually questioning what it is that we're doing in long form storytelling.

25:57I'm wondering how we can bridge the gap between those two things at all. And so I don't know, I think there's something of a revolving door. There's a door opening and closing in that. I'm personally interested in how we can get more of that young creative talent and those influences out of the kind of algorithm industries and into the long form storytelling industries. How we can get them switching away from creating moments that are viral to creating stories that are lasting because a lot of them are really really talented storytellers but there's a strange kind of gap I think in terms of process you're going to ask these people with a huge following and with a decent income to forego that to be unpaid and work developing a project for two years we're not going to be attracting the best talent of the next generation when we do that so I don't know that's something that I think about a lot and do you think that's a question of like craft and getting them interested in a slightly different version of or a very different version of what they're doing or is it a more like a platform business question do you know what i'm saying like is it like trying to get them interested in more long-form stuff how do you what do you think about how do you think about that um i think about how we can kind of remove some of the the barriers to entry you know um again like unpaid development for example is like a big issue that we have i remember the producer of everything everywhere Everything Everywhere All at Once was saying that, you know, he was driving Ubers throughout the whole of development and half of production, you know, to make ends meet.

27:29That's not a sustainable model. You're not going to be attracting the best talent and keeping them in this industry if you're asking them to work unpaid, for example. So I think that's something we can think about is like, how do we compensate people for the journey of development, not just the fruits of it? Because it can be a marathon. Right. And I mean, the flip side of that, do you think about making content for those platforms, short form stuff as part of your art, your craft? Is that interesting to you at all? I think actually this is an example of something that's necessary. You know, for the bait marketing rollout, you can't just put the trailer up.

28:06You have to create content that could go viral and that speaks to the themes of the show. So what we did was we filmed a series of fake press conferences where the interviewer says to me, oh, you know what? I thought the show was hilarious. I'm like, thank you very much, thank you. He said, particularly the idea of you as James Bond, hilarious. I go, so what do you mean? How's that hilarious? And she goes, oh, you know, it's funny. It's hilarious. It's actually not hilarious. And I have this whole kind of crash out, meltdown kind of thing. And then we kind of leaked it, right? And it really blew up.