Alison Stewart: This is All of It on WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart. Some breaking news regarding our March Get Lit Book Club event. As you know, we're reading the novel A Guardian and a Thief by Megha Majumdar. The story is set in the near future in Kolkata, India. The heat is oppressive. Climate change has led to famine. Everyone is struggling to survive. One family is just days away from escaping to the US only to have their immigration document stolen by someone who is also desperately trying to care for his family. I'll be in conversation with Meghan next Tuesday, March 24 at 6:00 PM at the New York Public Library, our partners. Today we're excited to announce our musical guest, Purbayan Chatterjee. Purbayan is a sitar master who fuses Indian classical music with contemporary genres from around the world. He even redirected his flight from India just to be at our Get Lit event. Join me, Purbayan, and author Megha Majumdar next Tuesday, March 24th at 6:00 PM. Tickets are sold out, but sometimes the library opens up a few in the days before the event. Head to wnyc.org/getlit for more information. You can also watch a live stream of the event. Again, go to wnyc.org/getlit for that information as well, and I'll see you on Tuesday.

Riz Ahmed is an Emmy Award-winning actor and an Academy Award-winning filmmaker as well as a critically acclaimed rapper. Now he can add TV series creator to his resume. The series in question is Bait. It's centered around a struggling actor named Shah Latif, played by Ahmed. Shah is Pakistani Brit who auditions to be the new James Bond and becomes the focus of an intense media firestorm about race, class, belonging, and identity.

As Shah navigates this position, well, he doesn't always make the best choices. Meanwhile, he's also trying to find his place in his chaotic family and community and sort out or sabotage his love life and get his career on track without having a panic attack. Bait premieres March 26th on Amazon Prime. Riz Ahmed is here in studio. Riz, welcome back to the show.

Riz Ahmed: Thank you for having me. It's good to see you again.

Alison Stewart: It's good to see you as well. Bait is a British slang term. What does it mean?

Riz Ahmed: Yes, it's one of my favorite British slang words. It means being really blatant or unsubtle or in your face. It's an adjective, but it's also a verb. You can bait someone up. It's like blowing up someone's spot, but it has more meanings than that, and each of the different meanings corresponds to one of the different elements to the show, because our show has lots of different genres to it. Bait is also, literally speaking, something that's used as part of a trap. There's a spy thriller element to our show. In Urdu, it means loyalty or allegiance. It's about Shah trying to balance ambition and family.

In Arabic and Hebrew, it means home. There's a big family element to this. Online for Gen Z, trolling someone is baiting them. There's a very psychological, kind of social media spiral element to our show as well. The show, just like the show's title, has all these different flavors, all these different dimensions, and that's what life feels like. It feels messy and slightly chaotic in its tonal whiplash, and I wanted to have that in the show.

Alison Stewart: I'm going to start a little bit with the show, and then we'll expand out a little bit. It begins with an audition, and your character's auditioning to be James Bond. Let's talk about that scene. What did it take to write that scene, a Bond-like scene, where-- What elements did it have to have?

Riz Ahmed: Oh, that's a great question. Yes. I think there's an amazing kind of cocktail, no pun intended, of Bond scenes, and it's sets such a template that, as a fan, it's not too challenging to inhabit. It's challenging and tricky to do it well. I think there has to be a femme fatale, I think there has to be a difficult or impossible choice, and I think that that choice usually has to be about your professional loyalty and your emotional loyalties.

I think there's something interesting at the heart of a lot of the Bond stories that actually really corresponds to our own show as well. So much of it's about being pulled between your professional ambition and your personal relationships, and do those two things have to be mutually exclusive? It's something I'm still trying to work out.

Alison Stewart: It's interesting, and I'm not giving anything away. Shah bombs the audition, but he sort of seems surprised. He's like, "Hey, I'd like to take that again," and she's like, "No, you're not taking this-- You're not going to do this again." What does this tell us about Shah?

Riz Ahmed: I think he's hoping against hope and sometimes being delusional and being hopeful and being ambitious. It's a really blurred line between those things. Shah is a dreamer, and he's running towards a dream, and that can be a really positive thing, a really empowering thing, but sometimes you have to make sure you're not also just running from yourself. I think that's the circle he has to square, can you run towards a dream, but take your community, your family, and even your sense of self with you, or do you have to leave that at the door when you're chasing dreams of a certain size and of a certain grandeur? I think it shows that he's a dreamer.

Alison Stewart: Where is he in his career?

Riz Ahmed: It's a great question. Shah, he's an actor who's fallen on hard times. He's about to turn 40. He had a small role in a Star Wars-esque franchise back in the day called Galactic Horizons. One of his prized possessions are those Funko Pop dolls they make that are in crates in his mother's garage. He also did a rom com called Under the Mango Tree. Didn't do as well as he'd hoped.

It's about a white woman eats a mango, and it's a magical mango, allows her to time travel back to colonial India where she falls in love with an Indian servant boy, played by Shah Latif. Unfortunately, it wasn't the four-quadrant smash he was hoping for. He's fallen on hard times. He manages to get through to this audition to be the next James Bond, but, as you say, when word gets out he might be playing the role, people have some pretty strong opinions and varied opinions, which is confusing for a people pleaser who's trying to please everybody.

Alison Stewart: Yes, Shah hopes that it will leak to the press that he becomes, or he's in the running for James Bond. We won't say how, but it does leak to the press. What does he hope will happen? Does he really think he's going to get James Bond?

Riz Ahmed: I think he wants the role badly. Here's a thing, I think those of us who aren't even actors want that role badly. Here's what I mean, James Bond is the archetypal, iconic symbol of success, decisiveness, desirability. All of us want to be James Bond in a way. Right. That's why I think that the show, hopefully, isn't really about acting, isn't even really about James Bond. It's about the gap between who we want to be and who we really are. Do we own that gap or do we try and hide it?

Alison Stewart: Let's listen to a clip from Bait. This is at his home with Shah and his family. Take a listen.

[playing scene from Bait]

Speaker 3: Sharba, are you going to be the next James Bond?

Shah: What?

Speaker 3: Huh? Wait, wait, wait, wait. It might be Cap. It might be Cap.

Shah: Can I have a look at that?

Speaker 3: Oh, no, no, no. It's legit. It's legit. What the fuck. Oh my God. [crosstalk] [unintelligible 00:07:57] this is crazy. This is crazy.

Shah: Can I--

Speaker 3: Wait, wait, wait, wait. Chill, man.

Speaker 5: Check the website. It's BBC. We can't trust him.

Speaker 3: Bro, why didn't you tell me? [unintelligible 00:08:07]

Shah: It's just an audition.

Speaker 3: Is this what you've been up to this whole time [unintelligible 00:08:10]

Speaker 6: [foreign language]

Shah: Listen, it's an audition. It's a photo from today's audition. That's all it is.

Speaker 5: It doesn't make sense, though, man, James Bond is white.

Speaker 6: [foreign language]

Speaker 5: I'm the [inaudible 00:08:21] Do you know how much sex James Bond does? [foreign language] every time sex. I'm the [unintelligible 00:08:29] and he's [unintelligible 00:08:30]

Speaker 7: [foreign language]

Shah: Listen, [crosstalk] baba, it's okay to be a little bit excited, it's nice even just to have the opportunity. It's a big deal. Brown James Bond, you should be proud.

Speaker 3: [unintelligible 00:08:40] This guy's face is going to be blasted everywhere. Imagine, imagining.

Speaker 5: Daniel Craig got paid 20Ms for the last movie.

Speaker 6: My Shaju will get 21.

Shah: Guys, just calm down. It's just an audition.

Speaker 5: Yes, call me if you need a body double for sex scenes.

Shah: [unintelligible 00:08:54]

Alison Stewart: I love that scene because everyone in the family is talking over each other.

Riz Ahmed: That's family, right?

Alison Stewart: It's so good.

Riz Ahmed: Yes. We really wanted to kind of throw people into this world, throw people into this experience. The direction and the camera work by Frank Lam, our DOP, and our director Bassam Tariq, who also directed Mogul Mowgli, a film that we did together. It's just immersive in media and kind of visceral. You just feel like you're suddenly there. You're part of this chaotic family.

That was really important to us, but it wouldn't have been possible without the incredible cast. We have Guz Khan, who's a national treasure now in the UK. We're very well known. Stand-up comedian, who's my cousin in that clip, saying, "It doesn't make sense, though, bro. James Bond is white." Kind of low key hating on my success. Sajid Hasan, one of the most prominent actors in Pakistan, who wants to be the body double in sex scenes, playing dad there.

Sheeba Chaddha, one of the most well known and beloved actresses in India over there, who thinks that I'll get 21 million compared to Daniel Craig's 20. Aasiya Shah, who's a rising star in the UK, who's just such personality and such a unique presence on camera. Yes, we were just really blessed with an amazing team. I think comedy is about chemistry, and so what you hear and what you see is the result of, I think, just that family vibe that actually existed between us on set.

Alison Stewart: I'm speaking with Riz Ahmed. He's the creator and star of the new series Bait, about a young actor trying to make it but managing to get in his own way. All six episodes will stream on Amazon Prime on March 26th. Is it true that you had to talk to Barbara Broccoli to be able to use the James Bond [unintelligible 00:10:45] of this?

Riz Ahmed: Absolutely did, yes. This show kind of dates back 10 years for me, scribbling down various anecdotes and stories about increasingly ridiculous situations I found myself in. Again, there were situations that juxtaposed my public and private self and how gaping the chasm was between those two things. It's thought about, how do we allow this to cohere? What's the vessel through which we can talk about who we want to be versus who we are? We said, of course, it's the out-of-work actor who wants to be James Bond. That's it. That's the perfect analogy. Then everybody said, "Yes, good luck. She's never going to let you use it, not in a million years," and rightly so.

Barbara Broccoli's shepherded this franchise from strength to strength. She's inherited it. It's a family heirloom, it's a prize possession, but I thought, "I have to try, man, I have to try." We wrote her a letter, wrote her an email, sat with her, had a long lunch with her, brunch with her, actually, at a diner in LA and gave her the script for the first three episodes and said, "This is what I'm trying to do." I explained to her that, "Honestly, it's not really about James Bond."

Alison Stewart: He's a symbol of other things.

Riz Ahmed: He's a symbol of success and aspiration. He's the archetypal mask that we want to wear when we're feeling vulnerable. I showed it to her, and to her credit, she totally got it, she totally understood it and she really loved it. She said, "Go ahead, go with God." Her one stipulation was, "Do not portray me in this show."

Alison Stewart: Oh, funny.

Riz Ahmed: I was like, "No, I wouldn't dream of it." I've got utmost respect for her as a woman and as a producer. Yes, she let us go with it. It really is very-- I don't think it's ever happened before. I don't think the rights holders to the Bond franchise have ever allowed people to do something like this with it. I think it really just spoke to the strength of those scripts, honestly. We had an incredible writers room with people from the Bear in there, people from Yellowjackets, people from the Colbert Report, the Jon Stewart Show.

Alison Stewart: That's a really interesting writers room.

Riz Ahmed: Yes, we had some amazing, amazing, amazing people with some stand-up comedians. We had people who worked with Hasan Minhaj. We had a really amazing brain trust, because we're trying to thread a really specific needle, we're trying to make it a comedy and also a family drama, but also a spy thriller and a love story and something that's a love letter to home. We needed the best brains possible, much smarter than me, and we got them, luckily.

Alison Stewart: One thing about, Shah, and I was discussing this with my producer Andrea, who brought you in, we are both moms, and we were like, "He makes bad choices, man." We both [unintelligible 00:13:33] like, "This poor guy is making some bad choices regularly." Why does he do that?

Riz Ahmed: Because that's what humans do, because that's who we are, because we're messy, and really, because we want to be loved. We look for love in all the wrong places. That's really the cardinal sin, but also the most human, relatable, forgivable thing about this character. He just wants to be loved. Actually, he needs to be loved, and that's the real problem. He has a deficit of self-love. In many ways, I would describe the show as its mission impossible if impossible mission was self-love.

Alison Stewart: Yes, but he wants fame too. He doesn't just want the heartfelt part. He wants a little bit of fame.

Riz Ahmed: Well, I think these days, isn't the kind of currency of acceptance, validation, and social affirmation some level of notoriety, right? We're living in [unintelligible 00:14:25], like moment of like everyone gets their 15 minutes. Well, I want mine. If everyone gets their 15 minutes, can I have an hour? Actually. In this social media age, I think what Shah wants isn't that different to what most of us want. We want to be publicly affirmed. We want to have our existence celebrated in some way.

Alison Stewart: You care less about that as you get older, though.

Riz Ahmed: Yes, I think so. I feel that myself, massively, is probably why I'm able to make this show now, and look back slightly, the validation seeker that I was. Now I'm just much more of a sleep seeker. Now that I've got a young kid, I just really want to catch the Zs whenever I can rather than the likes.

Alison Stewart: It's interesting. There's this sort of sad moment. Not sad, it's like, it breaks your heart a little bit when he's looking for a watch that he got when he was a kid, I think in high school.

Riz Ahmed: No, it was a watch that he got. It was a Rising Star award for best new actor at the Toulouse film festival from 2015.

Alison Stewart: He's looking at it, and what is he thinking when he's looking at it?

Riz Ahmed: He's thinking, "I have to sell this." Can I tell you, this is all drawn from my real life. There's so much in this show that's from-- Honestly, there's a park where we film this scene from the character's childhood. That's the part behind my parents house. There's a panic attack in the Kentish Town Forum, a bit famous music venue in London. That literally happened to me when I was supporting Wu-Tang Clan. Almost got booed off stage in front of 5,000 people. Had a panic attack burst out into that same alley we filmed in.

Also, one of the first things I ever was awarded as a prize, I did a micro budget film called Shifty, which was nominated for a BAFTA. It was made with just like a motley crew of friends. Against all odds, it did well as a movie and I won a watch. I was awarded a watch for best rising star or whatever. I opened that box and took the watch out and wore it for the first time, I think 15 years after it had been awarded to me because I always felt like this is an insurance policy, and probably once every six months I would check what I could sell that watch for.

Alison Stewart: Wow.

Riz Ahmed: That's about the precarity of anyone who's self-employed, honestly, in this economy. It was also about, I don't know, I just felt there was something heartbreaking about the character. When I think about it, it's something heartbreaking that for me is like, I don't feel I can count my wins. I have to hide them under the mattress for a rainy day, because you always feel a rainy day might come, particularly when you are a child of immigrants, particularly when you've been taught not to trust the universal society, or that you might get your fair roll of the dice. Yes, that was pulled straight from my life.

Alison Stewart: Wow. Your character's prone to panic attacks, and they take these surreal forms. We see them almost like dreams or visions that he has, like a head talking to him, where he's on a podcast hosted by Patrick Stewart, and there's a slight mention of mental health issues in the family. What is going on with him that he's having these sort of visions?

Riz Ahmed: I think it's hard to be a human being in the world right now. I think there's a reason why anxiety is the number one chronic health crisis facing us all. For someone like Shah, who is sensitive and is an artist, I think being an artist but trying to sell your wares in the gladiatorial coliseum of social media is like taking the most sensitive thing possible and putting it in the most bruising place there is.

I don't know anyone in the public eye who hasn't had or almost had a nervous breakdown at some point. I have. I've had physical breakdowns. I know most of my friends have had some kind-- in the public eye, have had a moment of, like, "I can't do it. It's not really natural. It's not human." What you're finding is, whether you're a celebrity or not, or you're someone who just liked the wrong tweet or said the wrong thing, the level of scrutiny and that hive mind that we can all face, whether that's cancel culture or judgment or accidentally trending unwittingly for your worst moment.

I was watching that thing the other day about that couple who kissed at the Coldplay concert. It's like, we're not hardwired as animals for that level of scrutiny. The fight or flight kicks in. I sympathize with him. I feel like he's having a very human response to a very unnatural kind of goldfish bowl that we all live in at the moment.

Alison Stewart: I think about that every day on the radio for two hours live. Every day, I'm like, this could be the last one.

Riz Ahmed: Yes, right? You never know.

Alison Stewart: I might say the wrong thing.

Riz Ahmed: Exactly. Here we go. Let's make it a good one.

Alison Stewart: My guest is Riz Ahmed. He's the creator and star of the new series Bait, about a young actor trying to make it. He gets in his own way occasionally. All six episodes will stream on Amazon Prime on March 26th. You've done comedy in the past, but you're also known for your intense roles, sort of Sound of Metal. This feels like a mixture. A mixture of the intense and uncomfortable humor. What made you want to go for both?

Riz Ahmed: When I sit down to watch something with my wife in front of the TV, the thing we watch most often, we watch nothing. We scroll past every title, watch 15 different trailers, and debate about whether we're watching a romance or a comedy or family drama or spy thriller. So I said, "I want to make all of it." It's really trying to solve a very personal problem. I want to give people a full meal.

Honestly, the projects I love the most are things that walk a tonal line, are things that stretch, bend, or subvert genre. I think that's most exciting to audiences who are so film and television literate now. You got to subvert their expectations. Just for me, as a fan and as a creative, it's exciting to me. I just honestly wanted to be as honest and messy as life is. I don't know, I'm here trying to be all like, I know what I'm talking about on WNYC. I'm going to walk outside and slip on a banana skin, suddenly I'm in a slapstick comedy. Life takes place in this kind of myriad of genres. I wanted this show, too. Honestly, it's a real point of pride for me that that's a big piece of feedback we're getting that it's quite unique in its multiplicity of genre. It's the different kind of tones that the. The show is. So honestly, it's just the kind of stuff I love making and love watching.

Alison Stewart: What's hard about comedy?

Riz Ahmed: What's hard about comedy, I think, is so many things are hard about comedy. I think structuring a joke is almost a technical feat, and yet ultimately, it lives or dies on something kind of ephemeral. Honestly, it feels like poetry to me, as someone who's written a lot of poetry. It's about, like, what's the minimum, most concise number of words and the correct amount of space with which you can bypass someone's brain and hit their heart, or with comedy, you bypass their brain and hit their gut?

I want you to laugh before you understand why you're laughing. So much of that is about the technical structuring of a reversal, or the spacing around things. There's a real technical aspect to it, but I tell you what is exciting about comedy is I feel you can be more honest, I feel you can say the unsayable, I think you can be more ugly, more messy, more vulnerable. All of which those things my character in this show is. I really look back fondly at doing comedy projects like Four Lions, which I'd done in my past. It's a comedy about a group of lovable, wannabe suicide bombers. On paper, you're like, "Well, hang on a minute."

I remember people coming out the screening at Sundance Film Festival like, "Should we be laughing or not?" It's a very British humor. It's very kind of dry humor. It's, honestly, I think, a place where we can understand, unpack, and laugh at some of the things that are the hardest to work through. I guess I'll say, just on a personal level, I need it. I need to laugh. We need to laugh. The world is so hard right now. Yes, like, what you're saying is right. Honestly, the show has all these different threads, and elements, and themes. If 90% of people watch this show and they just go, 'That was funny," I'm happy. I'm happy. I just want to give people some joy. I'll give people some honesty.

Alison Stewart: Why did this feel like the right project for you in your life at this moment?

Riz Ahmed: I felt like for a long time-- I think this marks a bit of an evolution in my thought around what my job is. I used to think acting was about being someone else and putting on a mask. Now I think it's about taking off the mask and sharing as much of yourself as possible. As a natural consequence, that meant diving deep into the anecdote stories and experiences of my own life and trying to share them in a way that felt scary and felt vulnerable, but felt right.

I feel like, as storytellers, our goal is to try and stretch culture. I think there's two ways of doing that. One is by inhabiting the archetypes that already exist. For example, I've got Hamlet coming out in the US in like 10 days or so, in two weeks-

Alison Stewart: Very excited about that.

Riz Ahmed: -and inhabiting those archetypes. The other way of stretching culture is about trying to offer up new ones. Create new molds, not just stretch the ones that already exist, particularly coming from a community and from a background that I felt hasn't often been represented growing up in a way that's felt honest to me, and celebrated the chaos of that family scene in the right way.

I wanted to do that. I wanted to offer that. I wanted to contribute that culturally, and I wanted to, honestly, work through it on a therapy level. Now and more and more, I feel like if you've got something you need to work out, you've got a series of questions, that's a useful place to go to as a storyteller. Not just for you, but for other people. I feel like I needed to work a bunch of stuff around, like, "Well, why am I really doing this? Why am I an actor? Is this just the attention seeker from my childhood that's just never grown up? Am I trying to take care of my family?

When I try and think that I'm trying to move forwards representation, what is that? Is that just a more, supposedly, noble version of fame I'm seeking? Does it change? Does it move the needle? Did it change anything? Are we just worse off than we ever were, 10 years after the representation windows closed?" I'm grappling with all of this myself, and I thought, like, "Man, actually asked the right way, these are some funny questions."

Alison Stewart: It's amazing that you're taking on the role that all actors want to take on. Hamlet is coming out in 10 days.

Riz Ahmed: Yes, April 10th, I think, is when it comes out in the U.S. that's amazing.

Alison Stewart: That's amazing. It's like the role that all actors want. Have you played Hamlet before?

Riz Ahmed: No, I've never played Hamlet, but I was in love with the material since I was 17. I got a government-assisted place to go to a private school, where I felt very out of place. I was very lucky to have a teacher who has kind of changed my life. He was a White Jewish guy from the north of England. We ostensibly had nothing in common, but he spoke fluent Punjabi.

He took me under his wing and he understood how I felt out of place there. He gave me Hamlet and said, "This is the stuffiest, most important crown jewel of the Western establishment and the dramatic canon. Have a read of this, maybe you find yourself in it." I suddenly realized, actually, Shakespeare isn't dead. He's been kidnapped. He's been kidnapped by intellectuals and by the establishment.

I read it. Actually, what I found was my own community story. This is a story about who you can and can't marry, people squabbling over the family business, spirit possession, and ghosts appearing to you in dreams or fever dreams. Duty, honor, loyalty. These were themes that were actually part of my lived experience growing up as a British South Asian in Northwest London.

Wembley, the neighborhood I grew up in is an equivalent to, say, Jackson Heights. I was suddenly like, "Man, this belongs to all of us." Really, honestly, as precocious as it sounds, at the age of 17, I was like, "I want to make a movie of this one day, and I want to democratize and smash open what this myth can be and who it can be for and set it in my own community." Yes, man, like 25 years later, we finally managed to do it.

Alison Stewart: First you have to watch Bait on Amazon Prime, and then you can go see Hamlet.

Riz Ahmed: Yes, hopefully. Thanks.

Alison Stewart: Riz, thanks for being with us.

Riz Ahmed: Thank you.

 

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