‘Riz Ahmed tires of being boxed into one identity’

NOW that he is 43, Riz Ahmed would like to be seen as an actor, rather than a Muslim actor. The dilemma is that many of the roles he has played are to do with his being Muslim.

He occupied the Lunch with the FT slot last week, when he was in­terviewed about his new film, Ham­let – Shakespeare’s tragedy is rei­magined in a British Asian family in London – by Danny Leigh, film critic of The Financial Times.

Riz won a scholarship to Mer­chant Taylors’ Boys’ School in Northwood, before graduating from Christ Church, Oxford, with a de­gree in PPE (philosophy, politics and economics).

At school, Riz “constantly felt like an outsider and, without knowing Shakespeare, he seemed the dead centre of a particular kind of Brit­ishness I also felt outside of.”

The journalist noted that the Brit­ish context for Riz’s rendering of Hamlet Hamlet “is also hard to ignore. Ahmed’s own experience of racism included his time at Merchant Tay­lors’. He has spoken of encountering neo-Nazi prefects as a schoolboy. I wonder if he felt déjà vu at the re­cent allegations about Nigel Farage, said to have racially abused young­er pupils at another London private school, Dulwich College. (Farage has denied that he ‘engaged in di­rect, unpleasant personal abuse’.)”

Riz was not pleased to be asked the question about the Reform leader, because it was a distrac­tion from the film he was promot­ing. “Come on, Danny,” Riz remon­strated. “This isn’t a Nigel Farage story. It’s disappointing if a conver­sation with me is reduced to one about identity.”

Danny observed: “He has just spent so much time, he says, giving journalists access to his creative pro­cess, and in the end, all they write about is Riz Ahmed, Muslim. Would I ask another actor the same kind of question? I tell him yes, and that cur­rent Best Actor Oscar winner Adrien Brody got shirty with me when I raised Donald Trump. It gets a laugh. The moment is still awkward, and made more so by the fact neither of us can stop hovering over the beef.”

The lunch took place at Ombra, an Italian restaurant in Bethnal Green, East London, where the bill came to a relatively modest £60.75 for “Bread and water x2 £5; Beef carpaccio £15; Casarecce £16; Ravioli £18”.

Finally, Riz did answer the ques­tion on Farage: “My take on it is lack of surprise that people allege this happened. But, also, sadness that it doesn’t seem to matter. It hasn’t dented his popularity, has it?”

Danny observed: “Ahmed has certainly spent much of his career answering questions about identity and politics. As a young actor, his roles were bound up with his eth­nicity and religion, in British movies such as the satire Four Lions, about inept jihadis. In the press, he spoke powerfully about the realities of be­ing Muslim in the UK after 9/11, and of being of south Asian descent at any time.”

Riz and his wife, American novel­ist Fatima Farheen, had a baby in 2023 – he had to rush the lunch be­cause he was on nursery duty.

He is deliberately vague about how he divides his time between the US and London: “I actually find that very helpful to leave muddy.”

Professionally, Riz “roughly di­vides his career into before and af­ter America”. Despite the dangers of Donald Trump, British Asian actors still dream of making it big in Hol­lywood. Riz explained: “I think the hidden mantra of British life is still ‘know your place’. Whereas over there, it’s ‘the sky’s the limit’.”