Melissa Harris-Perry: We're back now on The Takeaway. Actor Riz Ahmed Ahmed has been to a galaxy far, far away.

[From Rogue One: A Star Wars Story]

Character 1: What's your call sign, pilot.

Felicity Jones: We have to go.

Riz Ahmed: It's -- Rogue. Rogue One.

Melissa: He embodied a heavy metal drummer losing his hearing.

[From Sound of Metal]

Paul Raci: You play music, right?

Riz: No.

Paul: No?

Riz: No, not anymore. Not until I get the implant.

Melissa: In real life, he's even gained a following by putting out music as Riz MC.

Riz: [lyrics - Toba Tek Singh]

Raised the white flag, tried to squash the beef

The same white flag is trying to kill me

We can't separate, I'm part of you babe

My protein made your DNA

Allow our kids, they're raised on your hate

Don't be shocked when they retaliate

My whole team's just rats in your race--

Melissa: In his latest movie Encounter, which was released in theaters last week, Ahmed plays a Marine veteran, Malik Khan, who takes his sons on the run in an attempt to protect them from what he warns is an impending alien invasion. While the performance breaks new ground for the dynamic actor, Ahmed is not hoping that audiences will feel he disappears into the role. In fact, he's thought a lot about the metaphorical masks actors dawn, and he says he doesn't want to hide the real Riz anymore.

Riz: I think practically speaking for me, just to be very specific about process, it means not overly relying on research, not looking too much outside of yourself for the key to unlocking a character. Now, it's always going to be really important to ground any portrayal and authenticity, and particularly for a character like Malik Khan, who's a US Special Forces veteran. That's not an experience I have so, speaking to veterans, speaking to active servicemen, understanding their experience, their stories, that's absolutely essential, but only in so far as it's a gateway to finding the overlaps with your own experience and your own feelings about the world.

I think before, I was more interested in putting my own experience away and locking it up, and purely looking outside to find characters. Now, I'm much more interested in where those overlaps are between you and this character on the page that you assume you have nothing in common with, to begin with.

Melissa: Why did you want this character? Why was Malik someone worth fighting for? I know that you convinced the director, Michael Pearce to cast you in this role.

Riz: Yes. I really stalked Michael, honestly. I can sometimes become a bit obsessive in this way. I remember when I was auditioning for Star Wars, the director made a mistake of giving me his email address and I sent him about 16 auditions over two days. It was a similar vibe. Once I get this idea in my head I start calling him, texting him, getting mutual friends to call him, took him out to lunch.

I guess I'm just really interested in films that fit between genres that occupy lots of different tones at once. On the one hand, this is a film that has the thrills and spills and the imagination of sci-fi and genre and on the other hand, it's a very grounded relationship drama, family drama, father-son story with a lot of heart. It's not that common for people to even attempt to bridge those two tones. That's what was exciting from just movie point of view. From a character point of view, I just found the character really scary. I had never played someone like this. I don't immediately imagine myself into the archetype of returning American servicemen, rightly or wrongly. Probably audiences don't, and so I thought that was interesting to challenge myself and challenge audiences in that way.

Finally, and I guess the most scary thing was I'd never played a dad before. I was quite paranoid or just anxious I should say, about whether these kids would buy me as a father, and then I realized, "Well, that's what the character's thinking." He hasn't seen these kids for a while either. He's wondering whether he'd be convincing in that role. When I found that overlap as I was saying I thought, "Okay there's something here to work with."

Melissa: As you were saying that you are challenging audiences in part by the very notion of what we imagine, a returning American serviceman is, especially after more than 20 years in Afghanistan. It actually reframes what I was going to ask you about the roles you take that are clearly about identity, and those like Encounter or Sound of Metal where it seems that race or identity are not centralized, because now you're making me think that actually it is still at the center of what you are, or at least importantly orthogonal to what it is you're doing in this film.

Riz: It's interesting because I don't think of race as being central to this film, and I actually don't think of race as being central to any of my work. What I do think is central to all work is identity. I think that's true of acting, I think that's true of all stories, really. I think they're all challenging us to reimagine our identity. That's the fundamental mechanism of storytelling. It takes the listener or the viewer and puts them into someone else's experience through this mysterious process of alchemy and before you know it, you become someone else. That is a challenge to our idea of self that we cling to.

This idea that you and the other are separate, it doesn't really stand up when you watch a good story or listen to a good story. You suddenly become someone else. Challenging our notions of who we are, who the other is, realizing that self and other are actually the same, I think that's lies at the bedrock of all storytelling. Identity is at the heart of all storytelling in my view.

Melissa: Yes, that's the key insight about stories being windows and mirrors. That we can see ourselves, but then it's also a window into someone else's experience maybe one that isn't what's looking back at us in the mirror.

Riz: Yes, absolutely. I think this film really does hold up a mirror to our society. Some people have described it as sci-fi, I describe it more as now-fi. It is about an uncertain world, the divided society, a world where we have a fear of infection, a fear of the other. It's actually quite interesting because we turned up on set to film this movie, and I have to say that the film set or the world behind the camera felt more like sci-fi than story we were telling.

We filmed this during peak COVID and everyone on the team was in full biohazard suits. The sky was ablaze with the California forest fires. It was election season with civil unrest brewing so it felt pretty apocalyptic. I think that this film certainly does hold up a mirror. It feels quite urgent to me. Yet it's wrapped up in just this most delightfully, charming family story with these two incredible kids that just haven't seen anyone not melt when they've watched these kids on screen.

Melissa: As of course the dystopic future will nonetheless have really cute kids in it. This is part of the realities of the smallness of our humanity even in the enormity of our universal experiences. As you're talking about identity there's this other piece, the pond, that you started in British film and television and then shifted to the US industry. I'm wondering how you've experienced that shift.

Riz: It's interesting because I don't know if I've shifted or if the industry itself has shifted, and it's just more of a globalized industry particularly, now with streamers and you think of something like Squid Game, Money Heist, and these global shows or [unintelligible 00:08:23], the Turkish soap opera. These are global shows. People are used to crossing borders in that way to watch films and watch TV.

I think the shift from the US to UK is quite a small one and I think they're quite symbiotic as industries. In terms of coming and shooting in America, being employed more by American companies, I think that's also just an inevitability when it comes to the scale of the American industry. In the UK, it can be a little bit smaller, so there's just not as much work.

Melissa: There's another identity piece. This other identity, Riz MC where you are not an actor in that role but rather a maker of music. Talk to me about what it means or the parts of yourself that you're able to express as an MC that are different than your role as actor.

Riz: It's interesting because like I said, I used to think of acting as a place where I become other people and music as a place where I really express myself. I think over the last many years, that boundary doesn't really exist anymore. If you look at a project Mogul Mowgli, it's very much about me just trying to bring all of myself to the table, my own personal experience. It's a film that's in English and in Urdu. It's a film that, I guess, is some Sufi-horror-comedy musical. It's all the different genres and styles that the hybridity of my own identity is expressed fully in that film as well.

I'm thinking more and more that there isn't really a separation. Yes, they're different forms but increasingly I hope that I can just bring all of myself to all of my work. That is definitely a shift from years gone by where I had received or understood this message implicitly from society or from the industry that you shouldn't bring all of yourself to the table, you don't quite fit, people aren't really interested in stories like yours, be someone else. The one thing we want you to be is someone else. That's changed for me.

Melissa: I'm wondering if that's connected to this work that your production company did in relationship with the researchers at USC that's really showing how dire the situation is for Muslim characters in film and television. Is that part of the, just be someone else, and do you have a message or a set of goals for Hollywood relative to telling Muslim stories?

Riz: This is an initiative that I launched with an amazing organization called the Pillars Fund and also the University of Southern California and Dr. Stacy Smith. Her team there do a lot of research into just what the stats are and they really confirm what many of us have anecdotally, which is that Muslim characters are either invisible or they're villainized. The report is actually called Missing & Maligned. The stats are quite dire. I think it's like 1.6% of all speaking characters in the top 200 films in English-speaking countries in the last few years are Muslim characters. Three-quarters of the time when you have Muslim characters on screen, they're victims or perpetrators of violence.

This has a real-world impact. I think the effect of this is measured in enabling hate crime, enabling discriminated legislation, and enabling foreign invasions and misadventures, and war crimes. I think this is really a life-and-death issue. I feel this isn't just my problem or Muslims' problem, this is everyone's problem. If we create a culture that demonizes people, there will be dire consequences, and we're seeing the dire consequences of these really simplistic demonizing stories all around the world right now. I guess my message is for Hollywood is to support this initiative. They already are, we've had great pickup. It's a really take stock and think about how we can open up our industry culture to different stories.

Melissa: I'll just ask this last. Let's say that in 10 years, you and I are able to sit down and have another conversation, what do you hope we'll be talking about in a decade?

Riz: We won't have to talk about anything other than the work, stuff that still excites me ideally. I feel very lucky that I'm able to do work that excites me. Film, TV, music, throwing them all together. My point is ideally, we won't have to talk about so many issues surrounding the work, the obstacles to the work, the obstacles to people like me being able to make work that they're proud of but just the work. It'd be great to focus more on that rather than the issues that get in way of that.

Melissa: Riz Ahmed is an actor and his latest film Encounter is out now. Thanks so much for stopping by The Takeaway.

Riz: Thank you.

[00:13:49] [END OF AUDIO]

Copyright © 2021 New York Public Radio. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use at www.wnyc.org for further information.

New York Public Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline, often by contractors. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of New York Public Radio’s programming is the audio record.