Transcript
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Gentle, trilling music with a steady drumbeat plays under the dialogue.
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Speaker: Bullseye with Jesse Thorn is a production of MaximumFun.org and is distributed by NPR. [Music fades out.]
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“Huddle Formation” from the album Thunder, Lightning, Strike by The Go! Team. A fast, upbeat, peppy song. Music plays as Jesse speaks, then fades out.
jesse thorn
It’s Bullseye. I’m Jesse Thorn. My next guest is Riz Ahmed. Riz has spent the last decade pursuing dual careers in acting and hip-hop. His work has been controversial, funny, subtle—the sort of stuff critics love. And it’s found huge audiences despite all that. He moved from British independent movies, like the suicide bomber comedy, Four Lions, to a big supporting part in Jack Gyllenhaal’s Nightcrawler, to full-fledged leading man roles. He recently picked up his first Oscar nomination for his role in Sound of Metal. That made him the first Muslim ever nominated for Best Actor, by the way. And also, like I said, he is an MC and he’s very good at it. When I talked with him in 2016, he’d just released a new EP in collaboration with Heems, of Das Racist. They called the project the Swet Shop Boys. He’s kept rapping since then. [Music fades in.] Last year, he released The Long Goodbye, an LP. Here’s a single from it. “Mogambo”.
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“Mogambo” from the album The Long Goodbye by Riz Ahmed. '76 Rizzy boy Redinho Pick a side, do or die 'Cause all we ever do is die They either bomb us or we suicide We're the doner meat Don't you wanna try Woke up to a war Why you wanna beef with your own like? I keep my beef with the pork Why you bring a tweet to a gunfight? Yeah, they wanna kill us all [Volume decreases and continues under the dialogue then fades out.]
jesse
Riz Ahmed, welcome to Bullseye. It’s great to have you on the show.
riz ahmed
Thank you for having me, man!
jesse
Did you—did you always MC?
riz
Um… yeah! I guess so. Not always. [Chuckles.] That would be really impressive. But no, from like my teenage years, I guess. It was just quite a natural way to express yourself in the environment I grew up, in London and in that period of time as well, when our kind of MCing culture really started kind of going up a gear. With the explosion of jungle, garage, and grime. And the kind of mainstreaming of underground UK hip-hop, as well, and the kind of explosion of pirate radio stations. So, I’d go and MC on local pirate radio. This was before internet radio, so it would be like somewhere in a Council estate, someone would have an antenna and illegal kind of—you know—transmission equipment and just be broadcasting, you know, radio and you’d try and get a slot on there and play at local raves stuff like that. So, yeah, it was just a kind of—a natural thing. It was something that was around a lot and it just felt exciting. And as a young, restless, like, hyperactive kid, I was just very naturally drawn to it.
jesse
I was just in London doing this show, actually, and talking to a friend of a friend who was—she had been a commissioning person at the BBC Comedy, and she had been a culture studies major in school. I was a culture studies major in school. And we were chatting about our respective theses. And I did mine on identity strategies in hip-hop and she was like, “Oh, you know, mine was about the South Asian community in the UK and the way that hip-hop identities kind of transformed immigrant identities in the ‘80s and ‘90s, especially.” And I thought that was really interesting, because there is not much of a parallel tradition in the United States. And—
riz
Yeah. That’s fascinating. Yeah.
jesse
Yeah, I—like, I wonder to what extent, like, being what we call in the States, a head—like being down with hip-hop and hip-hop culture—was an extension of the culture of the people who looked like you that were around you.
riz
Yeah. It’s interesting, because you know, I think you’re talking about the different kind of South Asian experience in the US and the UK, and I think there is quite a pronounced difference. And it really comes down to class. I think a lot of the kind of South Asian migration to the UK is the kind of blowback of empire, post-World War II and etc. in the ‘60s and ‘70s, as—you know—Pakistan and Bangladesh destabilized, and you had civil wars and stuff like that and cyclones and whatever. And so, what you have is kind of a largely—although not completely, this is a generalization—a kind of working class… you know, wave of migrants to the UK. A lot of people that came to work in factories, that kind of thing. People who kind of—whose heritage maybe’s from rural backgrounds, whereas—in the US—I think the stipulation imposed on South Asian migration was you have to have a kind of masters or a PhD or above. So, you have a lot of people coming over becoming doctors, engineers, professors. And so, you’ve got a very different class profile. And I would say that the South Asian experience in the UK’s more akin, maybe, to the—again, generalizing—the, like—the Hispanic or Latino experience, in the US. By which I mean, our kind of socio-economic position is probably comparable to the Latino experience, here. And also, the way in which we—both those groups are kind of really entwined into the fabric of the societies that they live in. They really kind of built those countries, but still somehow remain strangely culturally unassimilable. Or, at least, perceived as such. Which, again, kind of really comes back to class and how much people hold onto their, you know—that heritage. And so, I think they were quite different experiences. So, the idea of like South Asian people—people like me—being like thugs or like, you know, being a credible voice for like working class hip-hop, maybe that’s kind of alien to American listeners, but it’s really not in the UK. You know. You know, there are South Asian neighborhoods you wouldn’t wanna get lost wandering around, in the UK. It’s just different in that sense. So, given that we had that kind of class profile, the kind of—you know, the music of people like 2pac or whatever—that resonated with us immediately. Immediately. And so, actually it’s a lyric that I’ve got on “Half Moghul Half Mowgli”, on the Swet Shop Boys album, is—you know, “Growing up, my only heroes were Black rappers. So, to me, 2Pac was a true Paki.” And that definitely did kind of mold and shape and influence what, like, young South Asian—emerging South Asian identity was in the ‘90s. And in the ‘80s, you had this generation that was like, “Okay. We came over here. We’re not—you know, we’re being hosted. You know. We’re guests here.” And our generation was like, “Well, we were born here. This is our country.” And we need to find a kind of, like, language and symbols to kind of express that kind of defiance in the face of those who said we’re not welcome and, “Go back to where you came from,” or something. Often, we heard like, “Go back to where you came from.” It was like, “Well, this is where I come from. This is my home.” And so, that African American experience—you know—as expressed through hip-hop really, really resonated with us.
jesse
I wanna play one of your solo tracks from a tape that you put out this year, under your hip-hop name—which is Riz MC. And it’s called “Englistan”.
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“Englistan” from the album Englistan by Riz MC. This is England God save the Queen Nah she ain't mates with me But she keeps my paper green Plus, we are neighbors, see On this little island Where we're all surviving Politeness mixed with violence This is England This is England The bridge we're living in A kitchari simmering Women in hijabs, syringe popstars And the promise of a Patel as a 'Man U' star Where the money you make and the man you are Stand in opposites, so we drink too hard The banks rob you and the news is half The truth wrapped up in boobs and arse Pigs hit kids, so Bricks hit windows and the High Street burns With broken dreams and herb Only thing you can't find in Tesco is that and a sense of worth So, hide behind a Benz or furs Go online to find friends or perv But click the wrong site for a free trial later, detention first God save the Queen [Volume decreases and continues under the dialogue then fades out.]
jesse
You know… the culture of England, and especially London and especially those parts of England and London that aren’t White British people, have generated like huge revolutions in global music, in the last—whatever—30 years. [Riz agrees.] I think in film and television, there’s a sort of compulsion to look backwards.
riz
Yeah. I couldn’t agree more. I think it actually goes beyond music. If you look at our literature—you know, whether it’s Zadie Smith or—you know, I’m gonna go ahead claim Salman Rushdie, even though he lives in New York. I kind of feel like all visual art, you know, peep artists like Tracey Emin talking about her kind of, you know, separate background is central to her work. Or Chris Ofili. You know, across all kind of art forms, I think that kind of tapping into the goldmine of our multiculturalism has really served us well and allowed a work to kind of travel and speak globally by tapping into specific experiences that are kind of—that kind of represent the kind of hybrid global culture that we live in. Right?
jesse
‘Cause there are these—there are these pathways that were—you know, these bilateral relationships that were established by the colonial history of the UK—
riz
Absolutely, yeah! And that’s the—that kind of—that empire has shaped the modern world. You know? And so, yeah. I agree that there’s definitely kind of been—I think we punch above our weight, culturally—the UK—because of our multiculturalism and how we kind of mine that. But you’re right, in film and TV and theatre, that doesn’t happen so much. I think it’s for a few reasons. I definitely find it really frustrating, and I actually think it’s a real missed opportunity. ‘Cause I, for one, refuse to believe that our best stories are behind us. I think they’re happening right now and they’re ahead of us. So, I think there’s lots of reasons, but ultimately none of them are good enough to prevent us from tapping into what has been such a strongpoint in other art forms. So, yeah. I think that’s really—you know, an insightful observation and I find it frustrating—
jesse
Like, fundamentally, there’s just not a ton of parts for Pakistani guys in Downton Abbey.
riz
Yeah. Yeah, yeah. That is—that is one of my—one of my lyrics. “I’m not happy until I’m in Whiteface on Downton Abbey.” [They laugh.] Yeah, so, I think it is—I think it’s tricky—
jesse
I mean, I’m not—I’m not gonna play, Riz. I kind of like Downton Abbey. But—
riz
Yeah. Well, you’re growing a big old beard, there. You’re gonna take—snatch some of my roles soon, too. [Jesse laughs.] So, calm down. No, um—I think you’re right, man. But the thing with the—even those period dramas and historical shows is even they kind of are based on a kind of erasure of our true history. And then—so, I think we have this kind of slight denial about who we are, as a—as a country and as a place, in Europe. And actually, the reality. And I think it’s interesting, the kind of—at least the idea of America, although maybe social mobility is, you know, as messed up for, you know, lots of people of color over here. The—at least, the idea of America is one that absorb difference. And, you know, the immigrant story.
jesse
We’ll finish up with Riz Ahmed after the break. Did you know he was also in Rogue One? The Star Wars movie? We’ll talk about what it’s like to perform in a Star Wars movie when you have—well, grown up watching Star Wars movies. It’s Bullseye, from MaximumFun.org and NPR.
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Cheerful, upbeat music.
jesse
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Music: Classical orchestral music. John Hodgman: Hey, everyone! It's I, John Hodgman of the Judge John Hodgman podcast. Elliott Kalan: And I, Elliott Kalan of the Flop House podcast. John: And we've made a whole new podcast! A 12-episode special miniseries called I, Podius. In which we recap, discuss, and explore the very famous 1976 BBC miniseries about Ancient Rome called I, Claudius! We've got incredible guests such as Gillian Jacobs, Paul F. Tompkins, as well as star of I, Claudius Sir Patrick Stewart! And his son! Non-Sir Daniel Stewart. Elliott: Don't worry, Dan, you'll get there someday. John: I, Podius is the name of the show! Every week from MaximumFun.org for only 12 weeks. Get 'em at MaximumFun.org, or wherever you get your podcasts. [Music fades out.]
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Music: Soft, upbeat music. Linda Holmes: On NPR’s Pop Culture Happy Hour podcast, we talk about what we’re watching, listening to, or just trying to figure out. Like what concert films you should watch if you miss live music. And great books to read alone or in your book club. All of that in around 20 minutes every weekday. Listen now to the Pop Culture Happy Hour podcast from NPR. [Music fades out.]
jesse
Welcome back to Bullseye. I’m Jesse Thorn. My guest is Riz Ahmed. He’s an actor and rapper. You’ve seen him onscreen in Nightcrawler, Four Lions, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. He recently made history as the first Muslim actor nominated for Best Actor at the Academy Awards. He earned it for his role in the recent drama Sound of Metal, which is out now on Amazon Prime. He and I talked in 2016. I wanna play a clip from the first movie that I saw you in, a movie called Four Lions that was written and directed by Chris Morris. And this is, essentially, a terror cell farce. It’s about a domestic terror cell in the UK that—and it is a goofy, silly movie about these guys.
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[Several people talking over each other at once followed by a brief pause.] Omar (Four Lions): Puffin says, “Find a target.” Barry: Well, we got a target, bro. We’re all agreed. Omar: What is it? Barry: It’s the mosque. Omar: What? Barry: Yeah. Bomb the mosque, radicalize the moderates, bring it all on! Omar: Okay, that—no, I like that. I do like that. That’s brilliant, ‘cause—let’s take out a bunch of Muslims, but they’re the real enemy! Aren’t they, Barry? Once we’ve done that, why don’t we truck bomb a kebab shop and fire a jumbo jet into Waj’s mum’s head? Why don’t we get a pig and staplegun it to our foreheads? Hassan: But if we bomb the mosque, it’ll make all the Muslims rise up! Omar: My cousin—my cousin, Faz, died defending a mosque in Bosnia. Did they flipping rise up, bro? Adeel: Let’s bomb Boots. They sell condoms that make you wanna bang White girls. Hassan: I second that. Boots.
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jesse
[Laughs.] I forgot about that line. [They chuckle.] It seems like one of the interesting things about your acting career, as it’s proceeded, has been you mostly manage to avoid the traditional bad guy in an action movie part for a Pakistani actor.
riz
Right. Although I’d love to play a Bond villain.
jesse
That’s on the table, just so everyone knows.
riz
Just wanna put that out there!
jesse
And you kind of went from parts where race was essential, but there was a critical view of the role of race and identity and religion to—and you’ve sort of stepped up the ladder to the point where, in The Night Of—the HBO miniseries in which you recently starred—you played a character whose race was certainly part of his identity. It was not the classic sitcom, ethnic best friend part where he just happens to be not White. But it was not the essential part of the story. It was not the basis of the story.
riz
Mm. Yeah, it’s interesting. I mean, I wrote about this a little bit in my—in my essay, recently—which is about, like, you know you get these stages of representation sometimes, of minorities or groups that aren’t that visible. First of all, you get the stereotype, which is like—you know—the shopkeeper, the terrorist, the cab driver. Then you, you know—then you get the stuff which takes place on ethnosized terrain, as you said, but it kind of subverts those dominant narratives maybe. So, that’s like Four Lions or Road to Guantánamo, that I did, which is like, “Okay, we’re gonna engage with the war on terror. You know, this film has brown people in it because it’s about some of those issues around brown people, specific to them. But we’re gonna kind of maybe try to challenge some of the assumptions that a group is burdened with.” And then you get to this point where you’re just a guy and you could be playing anyone. Now, I kind of think that it’s great to be kind of free of racial stereotypes or free of having to constantly address racial stereotypes, even if you’re kind of challenging them in your work. That can feel like a burden. But I think that—I don’t think, necessarily, that playing, like, someone called Jack or Bob is necessarily up the ladder compared to playing someone called, like, Abdul or Rahim. I think it just feels like that because playing Jack or Bob is so often closed off to people like me. I don’t think like deracinated portrayals are the holy grail. You know, ideally you could have, you know, the sitcom best friend who is called Abdul. You know what I mean? And it’s like—and you engage with the fact of his—of his cultural identity, but it’s not—it’s not about that. You know? I really love the way, like—you know, Ross and Monica were Jewish, in Friends. And they, like—they were Jewish. That was a thing. But it wasn’t about that. You know? Or the way that—and if you kind of do that enough, then you can fully embrace the cultural specificity of the characters without becoming, like, a marginal, niche kind of movie. So, the way that Woody Allen has always kind of explored—you know—this kind of like—this circle of like, you know… upper class Jewish Manhattan kind of—you know, the social circles. You do that enough, you just kind of bring it to the center stage of the American story. It just feels like it belongs there, at the heart of the American story. Or what Scorsese did with Italian Americans. You certainly kind of—you know, engage with the specificity of that experience, but if you do it well enough and you do it consistently enough and regularly enough, it stops being a thing. And I think that would be pretty cool, if we can get to that point.
jesse
You get to be a space man in a Star Wars movie.
riz
[Laughs.] Yeah! Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. So—you know, with that—I don’t know where that play out on these stages.
jesse
All I—I want—so, the only—you know, this—you’re gonna be in this Star Wars movie that comes out in the winter and so all I know about this movie, besides that I’m real glad Forest Whitaker’s finally getting to be in a Star Wars movie. That guy’s always been the ultimate space man.
riz
He’s amazing. Yeah.
jesse
But finally, it was—just space Ghost Dog is what I’m hoping for. Fingers crossed. [Riz laughs.] But you—so, there’s like one line of your dialogue in the trailer for the Star Wars movie and you’re doing a voice that is neither an American accent, as you did in The Night Of—in which you played an American guy—nor, I think, your ordinary speaking voice. At least, it didn’t sound like it. [Riz agrees.] So, how do you choose—without getting into plot elements of Star Wars that I’m sure you’re contractually obligated not to talk about—how do you choose, like, what is the cultural position and, like, talking of a space man?
riz
Well, I mean, people [laughs]—
jesse
You know what I mean?
riz
I mean, in Rogue One, I think pretty much everyone chose something close to their accent, so it is kind of rooted in a kind of, you know, British RP accent.
jesse
Wait, what’s an RP accent?
riz
RP is received pronunciation. It’s—
jesse
That’s like the Queen’s English?
riz
That is, yeah. So, there’s a—there’s a touch of that. Like I think maybe it might not be—make a lot of sense to play him as, like, a cockney geezer kind of thing. Like—but we kind of played roughly close—
jesse
They initially—we should explain. Your character initially was Dick Van Dyke was cast in the role.
riz
[Laughs.] They needed someone to come in, firstly, just for ADR. [Jesse agrees with a laugh.] And then they went, “Actually, let’s put him in the picture as well.” So, yeah, I don’t know. We kind of just played roughly close to ourselves and in the kind of, like—just the character and—the characters and the way they kind of conduct themselves and interact with people. I don’t know, it just kind of—that all kind of started guiding you, in its own way, and you know, your voice’ll go up or down and you’ll carry a certain amount of tension or not. You know? And so, that kind of stuff has its own weird alchemy that kind of just does its own thing. But as a starting point, I think we all kind of went with something close to our own accents. And I think that’s also because Rogue One is—kind of aspires to be a slightly different kind of Star Wars movie that feels a little bit more gritty. A little bit more real. You know. The way it was shot. The director of photography, Greg, like, shot films like Zero Dark Thirty, you know. Gareth Edwards, our director, actually operated the camera himself, handheld, and so there was definitely a sense of trying to make it feel kind of for real.
jesse
Do you have feelings about Star Wars? Like was it a—was it a thing for you?
riz
It wasn’t like a huge, like—I wasn’t—I mean, I will say I’m a Star Wars fan, but knowing how big—knowing how fan-y Star Wars fans can be, I’d take that with a pinch of salt. Like—.
jesse
I’m not asking you to get into a nerd contest with anybody. ‘Cause you never win that.
riz
[Laughing.] Yeah, right, exactly. I would lose. No, I would—I would—no.
jesse
You’d never win that on the internet.
riz
I mean, to be honest, like, my relationship with it was quite—I mean, it was one of the first films I remember seeing. I saw it with my brother, on VHS. And it was just—the images from that were seared onto my mind and they inspired me and me and my brother started, like, running around the house with a notebook writing down, like, film titles. Like, you know, The King Jumps Forwards or whatever. You know? After watching Empire Strikes Back and just, like, act out these films. So, kind of like—it started my career, as a little kid playfighting around the house. But I didn’t really get what was going on. I was, like, young. So, I didn’t really understand the stories. I was like, “Oh, Ewoks. Cool.”
jesse
You know, when I went and watched the first new Star Wars movie—or the first new-new Star Wars movie. Star Wars number seven? [Riz confirms.] And the thing that was maybe the most vivid was thinking about—when that first trailer came out and John Boyega took off his Storm Trooper helmet and was Black and it’s such a vivid illustration of White privilege that, for me as a White guy, it had never occurred to me that all those guys [laughing] weren’t White. Until you get that rush of recognition, tempered with the idea, “Oh! Right. This is the 21st century.” I mean, it’s whatever century Star Wars is in, don’t email me. [Riz chuckles.] But, like, this is the—this is the world where there’s going to be some represent—there’s going to be some representation. You know? There’s gonna be women and people of color and things like that. And that was so vivid when set against those feelings of nostalgia. You know what I mean?
riz
[Chuckling.] Yeah. Yeah. I do know what you mean. I think it’s very powerful, as well. And I think it’s really… I think it’s the right thing to do on so many levels. Whether you want to be cynical and look at it from a business standpoint or whether you wanna be an idealist and look at it as a kind of, like—you know, the role of art is to stretch empathy, to put yourself in someone else’s shoes. So, let’s make sure there are lots of different kinds of pairs of shoes that people can step into. Yeah, I think it’s about time and it’s the right thing to do and I think a franchise like Star Wars can really help lead the way with something like that. You know? And so, I really respect, you know, what Kathy Kennedy and that whole team at Lucasfilm have decided to do, to go in that direction and just going, “You know what? I want it to be a girl. I want—it should be a girl at the center of seven.” That’s amazing. And it sends such a strong message and kids will grow up just seeing the world and the world of magic and the place where dreams live as a place where people who look all different kinds of ways can also live. You know.
jesse
I think the fact that it’s kids, too, is really significant. Because I think, as a child, you receive those kind of messages about dreams and identity very unconsciously. [Riz agrees.] You know? In a way that maybe you don’t so much when you’re 27 and you’ve got a college degree in it.
riz
Of course. Yeah. I mean, when we were—when we were growing up, every time there was like a—you know, a brown face reading the news or on TV, you know, my mom would call us from the bedroom. [Excitedly.] “Come downstairs! Come downstairs! An Asian on TV!” You know. It was [chuckling]—it was like—it was a big deal.
jesse
Well, Riz Ahmed, I’m so grateful that you took all this time to be on Bullseye. It was great to get to talk to you.
riz
Thank you so much for having me, man.
jesse
Riz Ahmed, everyone! As we have been saying, he is nominated for his first Academy Award ever for his performance in Sound of Metal. We’ll find out how that goes later on this April. Also, I will say that if you haven’t seen Riz in the movie Four Lions, one of his earlier movies: very, very highly recommended. Probably the best terrorist bombing plot comedy released in the last ever. So, check out Four Lions, too.
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Thumpy, twangy music.
jesse
That’s the end of another episode of Bullseye. Bullseye is created out of the homes of me and the staff of Maximum Fun, in and around greater Los Angeles, California—where there is an endless parade of giant trucks filing down my narrow street, each stopping to be filled with dirt, then continuing on their merry way. The show is produced by speaking into microphones. Our producer is Kevin Ferguson. Jesus Ambrosio and Jordan Kauwling are our associate producers. We get help from Casey O’Brien. Production fellows at Maximum Fun are Richard Robey and Valerie Moffat, who both started this week. They are on the line with me right now for the first time. Welcome aboard, Richard and Valerie! Our interstitial music is by Dan Wally, also known as DJW. Our theme song is by The Go! Team. Thanks very much to them and their label, Memphis Industries, for sharing it. The Go! Team have a brand new single, by the way! It’s called “World Remember Me Now” and, like The Go! Team in general, it totally rules. You can also keep up with the show on Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube. We post all our interviews in those venues. And I think that’s about it! Just remember: all great radio hosts have a signature signoff.
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Speaker: Bullseye with Jesse Thorn is a production of MaximumFun.org and is distributed by NPR. [Music fades out.]
About the show
Bullseye is a celebration of the best of arts and culture in public radio form. Host Jesse Thorn sifts the wheat from the chaff to bring you in-depth interviews with the most revered and revolutionary minds in our culture.
Bullseye has been featured in Time, The New York Times, GQ and McSweeney’s, which called it “the kind of show people listen to in a more perfect world.” Since April 2013, the show has been distributed by NPR.
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