Riz Ahmedhas a way of making even a New York hotel lobby feel simultaneously cinematic and personal. It’s a sunny June afternoon when the actor hops on a Zoom call, where his latest thriller,Relay, from directorDavid Mackenzie, is making its Tribeca Film Festival debut. With a background decked out in leather couches, mirrored walls, and a chandelier suffusing the room with warm light, it’s also a setting that could belong to anyone passing through — except Ahmed. Sporting a vivid lime sweater that pops brightly against muted tones, the 42-year-old actor instantly owns the frame. Relaxed and attentive, his smile is quick, and his presence is grounded yet quietly magnetic.
There’s little trace of fatigue, despite how busy he’s been this year. BetweenRelay’s Tribeca debut,Wes Anderson’s latest ensemble projectThe Phoenician Scheme, and the anticipated release of a modernHamletretelling set to premiere at theToronto International Film Festivalnext month, the Oscar winner’s calendar suggests constant motion — yet in conversation, he seems entirely unhurried.
When the subject turns to his latest collaboration — an untitledAlejandro G. Iñárrituproject led byTom Cruise— Ahmed’s composure cracks into something closer to joy. “I can’t really share anything about it, other than just to say that Tom [Cruise] and Alejandro [Iñárritu] andSandra HüllerandJohn Goodmanand the whole cast,Michael Stuhlbarg, are just incredible,” he says, breaking into a grin. “I just hugely enjoyed working with them. I’m really excited for that project to meet the world, I think it’s something quite special and definitely very different.”
It’s a response that feels true to who the actor is: Careful with details, generous with feeling. In that balance, you start to see what makes Ahmed so compelling as one of our generation’s most multitalented performers. Whether he’s acting, producing, or writing (including songs), it’s his instinct for precision paired with openness, curiosity, and the sense that even in a year as crowded as this one, he’s still reaching for something new.
Ahmed Wanted To Become What He Couldn’t See
For Ahmed, the idea of becoming an actor was once closer to a secret than an official plan. Growing up in Wembley, the son of British-Pakistani parents who had built their lives in London after emigrating from Karachi, he didn’t see many on TV or in film who looked like him. “Of course, there are generations of people who came before me whose work is really important, but for whatever reason, I wasn’t sure if there would be opportunities for me to really express myself and to have a viable career,” he says.
When he arrived at Oxford, he began to experience the weight of that gap more sharply. Alongside the weight of an isolating culture, the idea of pursuing acting full-time felt too far-fetched. However, that all changed after an acquaintance encouraged him to apply for drama school. “My initial thoughts about what could be possible for me as an actor were very limited, which is why I think I really kind of stopped myself from pursuing that dream, at least internally, or at least stating that dream to anyone,” Ahmed recalls.
He applied to just one program at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, deciding that if he didn’t get in, “it wasn’t meant to be” — a mantra he’s kept close to his heart since. Although he was accepted, he couldn’t afford it, even after trying and winning a single scholarship — and still coming up short.
That’s something that I’ve always been passionate about — stories that are a bit of a twist on the classic.
Then came what Ahmed describes as a “fairy godmother” moment, when theater producerThelma Holthelped him raise the money that made his studies possible. While reflecting on the turn that brought him from those early doubts to leading roles, Ahmed speaks with gratitude rather than self-congratulation.
“To be here talking to you right now, to bepromoting a film likeRelay, it’s a great privilege. I feel incredibly grateful,” he says, smiling faintly. “I feel grateful to be able to get to do this and do what I love, and express myself freely and share stories that I think are fresh and a little bit different. That’s something that I’ve always been passionate about — stories that are a bit of a twist on the classic. That’s what I’ve always been drawn to as a fan, and so to get to tell stories like that is a real buzz. It’s a real honor.”
Ahmed’s Early Roles That Changed the Conversation
By the time Ahmed left drama school, his earliest screen roles were landing him in projects that seemed almost inseparable from the politics of the moment. Having grown up in London post-9/11, the then-24-year-old was starring in critically acclaimed features likeMichael Winterbottom’sThe Road to Guantánamo, the sharp-edged satireFour Lions, andMira Nair’s adaptation ofThe Reluctant Fundamentalist— films that each spoke to challenging stereotypes in a rapidly changing political landscape.
When asked if those films spoke to his own evolving sense of activism, Ahmed leans back ever so slightly. “It’s interesting because, yes, those films do engage and did engage with conversations that were very kind of contentious and urgent and pressing in the zeitgeist at the time and continue to be,” he admits with a knitted brow. “But at least as an audience, I never viewed them as didactic social commentaries. They were always about characters. They were always about stories. They were always about the experiences of real lives that were constructed by us — as storytellers.”
He pauses for a moment, weighing the bigger picture. “I think it just so happens that certain lives and certain stories that break the mold, that offer a perspective we don’t often see — those stories are often labeled as political. Actually, I think that it’s really interesting what gets labeled political and what doesn’t. Some experiences are taken, first and foremost, as political or social commentary, and other people’s lives’ stories are taken as life stories.”
For Ahmed, this kind of “disruptive” storytelling is not only interesting for all audiences, but something he appreciated taking on early in his career. “I was proud to be a part of stories that felt disruptive to the culture. That’s something I continue to look for in the work I take on,” he says. “On a more fundamental level, I think that stories should be disruptive to our preconceptions and our assumptions. I think that’s the role of story. The role of story is to challenge us, to open our eyes, to blow our minds, to open our hearts, to see the world in new ways, to recognize ourselves in places of characters and people that we thought we were nothing like. I think the power of story is, in a way, to disrupt our comfortable assumptions.”
I think that stories should be disruptive to our preconceptions and our assumptions. I think that’s the role of story.
As someone who loves film and television just as much as the audience, that doesn’t always mean something needs to feel like “social and political work or homework.” Instead, he leans into how it’s always about the feeling we have when watching a story that resonates and challenges our perception of identity and the world around us.
“When you’re watching a story — I just sawDenzel Washingtonin a play [Othelloon Broadway] — and you suddenly feel like, ‘Wow, I feel like I’m him right now,’ or I’m watchingDame Judi Dench, and I certainly go, ‘Wow, I’m Judi Dench right now watching Judi Dench do a thing,’ that’s entertaining, that’s transcendent, that builds empathy. That’s disruptive. That’s disruptive to your sense of self, that’s disruptive to how you see the world. That’s disruptive to the idea that Judi Dench and I are not the same.”
At its root, “story is a disruptive medium” — one that’s entertaining, engrossing, and exhilarating, and Ahmed never felt he was creating this “subset of stories” that are instinctually disruptive. “I feel like I was telling stories that go to the core of what stories are meant to do,” he says.
How ‘The Night Of’ Changed Everything for Ahmed
Alongside a catalog of growing film work, Ahmed went on to become a familiar face on British TV, appearing in shows likeBritz,Dead Set, andWired— each another step in a restless, shape-shifting career. But while building those steady foundations, it was HBO’s groundbreaking miniseries,The Night Of,that changed everything. Nearly a decade later, Ahmed still describes the whole experience with a kind of awe.
“When I look back onThe Night Of, I guess it was my first time I was really working in America on a big production, and that was just eye-opening for me,” he says of the complex narrative that finds a young Pakistani-American accused of murder. “It was such a learning experience. It was such a gift working withJohn Turturro.”
The series was critically acclaimed and hailed as one of the network’s best, with Ahmed’s performance as the vulnerable Nasir Khan also earning him a Primetime Emmy in 2017, beating out not only his co-star, Turturro, but alsoRobert De Nirofor the award. When I mention how it must have felt like an industry accomplishment that he could hold his own in a category with veterans, Ahmed is humbled by the praise.
“I know you mean it in a tongue-in-cheek way — ‘you beat DeNiro’ — but acting is often framed, as anything is in our world, as a kind of competition,” he says. “These awards, it feels wonderful to be recognized by your peers, but John [Turturro] told me something back then, which was, ‘The only competition in acting is with yourself to see how deep you can dig and how far you can go, how much of a leap of faith you can take in every moment.’ That stayed with me.”
The experience was formative and a solid “training ground” for Ahmed, who praises his time on the set with not just Turturro, but creatorSteve ZaillianandJames Gandolfini, who worked on the original pilot before his tragic passing.
“I remember when I got the script — because we didn’t have HBO in the UK at that time — I was like, ‘HBO?’ I only knew HBO, really, from the boxing matches, the pay-per-view boxing, so I was like, ‘Wow, that boxing channel’s thinking about branching out to drama. What’s the deal with this?’” Ahmed laughs at the memory, shaking his head slightly. “So, it was definitely the start of my journey in being exposed more to the American industry. There were a lot of elements to it.”
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Did he sense, in the moment, thatthe show would resonate so strongly all these years later? “You never know how anything is going to turn out. You do something likeFour Lions,and at a time, people saw it, but a lot of people didn’t. Fifteen years later, so many people stop me on the street still for that, and it’s their favorite film. Something likeThe Night Of,you might do it, and it becomes successful there and then. You just really can’t tell,” Ahmed says, adding how he believes that “stories find someone when they need it most.”
It’s only when that hunger happens in specific pockets that we recognize it as something that resonates. “Sometimes the whole culture needs a story — when they’re hungry to make sense of a topic or something in the zeitgeist, the story will find us all collectively in a culture,” Ahmed muses. “But sometimes when it doesn’t make a big splash in that way, I still have faith that the people who need to see it, the people who need to experience it, it finds them.”
Across eight episodes,The Night Ofwas a project that spoke to his broader artistic mission. “What I intended and was excited to try and do as an actor at the beginning of my journey, like 20 years ago now, compared to now, hasn’t really changed, and that’s always been that I wanted to offer a fresh point of view, tell some fresh stories that maybe weren’t being told. Those are the movies I was always excited by, whether I was watchingGoodfellasor something. I was being taken into a world I hadn’t seen before.”
With his goal as a performer to tell stories that offer “a fresh point of view that uses fresh characters and fresh worlds,” Ahmed always wanted to find a sense of freedom in what he was able to do, especially in terms of new challenges and all the ways he could push himself artistically.
“David Bowiesaid once, ‘When you can’t feel the bottom of the swimming pool, that’s when the most interesting things happen, when you’re just slightly off balance.’ What was so exciting aboutThe Night Ofwas that it was an untold story. It was taking us into a family and a kind of dynamic, and a situation that we hadn’t seen before on screen at that moment in a mainstream way,” Ahmed explains. “I guess a quicker way of saying it is always wanting to do things that stretch me and stretch the culture, and I think that has never changed.”
‘Sound of Metal’ Forced Ahmed to Rethink His Acting Approach
By 2019, Ahmed was slowly building a reputation as an actor unafraid of transformative roles, but it wasSound of Metalwhere he found himself entering the most physically and emotionally demanding role of his career. Directed byDarius Marder, the film earned two Academy Awards and a Best Actor nomination for Ahmed — the first Muslim and first British-Pakistani performer to ever be recognized in that category.
Ahmed shakes his head when asked if the performance about a punk-metal drummer whose life collapses as he begins to lose his hearing set another level in storytelling for him. “It’s interesting, I don’t think about things in that way. I think from the outside… it can be easier from the outside to kind of chart the trajectory and the narrative arc of someone’s career and their choices, but I think from the inside, it’s very much kind of moment to moment, day to day, year to year. Like, where are you at in your life, and where do the opportunities meet you in that place?”
Given that he’s been drawn to roles that push boundaries, it’s always been less about fitting a mold and more about stepping into the unknown. “I think, if you’re finding something that takes you to a new place and takes audiences to a new place, it’s more likely to stand out from the crowd. It’s going to be something a little bit different, and I think that’s what audiences want,” Ahmed says. “They want to be taken on the journey and see a story or a character or setting that they haven’t necessarily experienced before. That’s always going to be intriguing. That’s always going to get people leaning in and saying, ‘Well, what is that? I haven’t seen that.’”
That was actually the key to unlock a new kind of process for me.
IfThe Night Ofserved as Ahmed’s training ground,Sound of Metalbecame something closer to a recalibration of that early process. “Sound of Metalwas very interesting because there was so much sign language and drumming that I had to learn every day over eight months that I didn’t have a lot of time to really do the analytical work that we often train to do as British actors on our scripts and our text, and really work on the text in that way. In the beginning, I thought, ‘That’s going to mess me up.’ But I think, more now than ever, that the gift and the curse are the same.”
In carrying the weight across months of practice, Ahmed says learning drums and American Sign Language every day for nearly a year became the thing that cracked something open in him. What first felt like an obstacle turned into a discovery.
“I thought that was a problem stopping me from getting my work done, but that was actually the key to unlock a new kind of process for me,” he explains, leaning forward. “Okay, it’s going to be a very physical preparation in body communication through drumming, and body communication through sign language. So, then I came out of that not thinking, ‘What kind of role am I going to do? Where is my career going to go?’ but thinking, ‘How can I bring morephysicalityinto my preparation for roles?’”
For Ahmed, Growth Comes From Letting Go of the Chase
It’s a shift he contrasts with earlier projects, where the work was often defined by endless note-taking. “I did a lot of research forThe Night Of— like,a lotof research and met a lot of people. I would record them. The time of doingNightcrawlerandThe Night Ofwas a period in my creative process where it was very, very, very research-heavy… But if I go toSound of Metal,I was in a much more creative space in my process.”
That creative reset also changed how he now measures success. Rather than tracking career milestones, Ahmed frames each project as a chance to expand his process, not his résumé.
“‘What are some new approaches I could take to just keep growing?’ Because your career ebbs and flows in a way that you can’t control and it’s best not to even think about it,” he says. “But your heart, your creative appetite, your experience, and hopefully your talent, that’s something you have to continue to nurture to allow it to grow. That’s the thing that I try and focus on more.”
Sound of Metalwasn’t about creating a new benchmark or chasing the next accolade — it was proof of how a project is strongest when ego dissolves. “I think it’s very important for us as creatives to only pay passing attention to [career milestones], because I think the best work you do is when you’re not self-conscious, literally,” Ahmed adds. “The more you’re thinking about the story you’re serving, the character you’re serving, the audience you’re serving, the director you’re serving… the less of you there is in the equation, the less self-conscious you are, the more that energy can just flow through you.”
‘Relay’ Gave Power to Ahmed’s Invisible Man
While a role like Ruben inSound of Metalhad Ahmed stepping into a more physical and emotional terrain,Relayhas the actor operating in even more silence. In Mackenzie’s high-concept, Hitchcockian thriller, Ahmed plays Ash, a fixer who arranges secret settlements between corporations and their would-be whistleblowers, likeLily James’ Sarah. Using an old-school relay phone system to keep his identity hidden, it’s a role built on shadows and ritual for a man who has mastered the art of being invisible.
“It was like living a dream,” Ahmed confesses, with a grin. “Don’t you dream every day about not using your phone and going off-grid and not being constantly connected? We don’t use our phones; they use us at times, right? That was something very interesting to me, the idea of going off-grid and disconnecting. That felt kind of cool, and I think that’s something that passes through a lot of people’s minds. ‘What if I just got a flip phone and disappeared off the face of the earth?’”
Beyond that fantasy of disconnection, what gripped Ahmed most was the way the film reframes communication. “The idea of kind of isolating oneself and putting up all these barriers to communication, playing a role where it’s very often nonverbal, I found that to be really, really exciting and interesting from a creative point of view as an actor.”
Every single conversation in this film has an element of tension, has an element of drama, has an element of intrigue.
He becomes even more animated when delving deeper into the film’s premise. “You take it for granted, right? Someone goes, ‘Hey, we’re going to do a film where the main characters are never going to be in the same room talking to each other face to face. They’re going to be using this analog relay service.’ That just pulls me in, and I think that will pull audiences in, as well. It means that every single conversation in this film has an element of tension, has an element of drama, has an element of intrigue.”
That tension is heightened by Mackenzie’s direction, whom Ahmed lights up at the mere mention of. “I remember watchingHell or High WaterorStarred Up,and thinking, ‘This guy’s a badass. I really want to work with him.’ When this opportunity came up, I was all over it. At the end of the day, cinema is a visual medium. You shouldn’t have to have a ton of conversations to be pulled into a character, and I think David so masterfully pulls the audience in, even without explaining who people are, even without giving you loads of context, loads of dialogue.”
That restraint meant grounding his character, Ash, in plenty of research and meeting with whistleblowers who “risk their lives to try and do the right thing.” Having spent one-on-one time with Mackenzie, Ahmed admits they had “so much truth to ground the story” that it never felt like anything more was needed. “That three-dimensionality was there because of the details and the specificity of the story and how it had been researched.”
‘Relay’ Was High-Stakes Filmmaking in a City That Never Sleeps
Research aside, the shoot itself — 300 scenes in 27 days, and almost entirely at night — was as relentless as the story it tells. “I’m not going to lie to you — it was so intense.Sointense,” Ahmed playfully exhales, recalling the production schedule. “But we were making something fast-paced. We were making something that was high stakes. A highwire act. That’s what the story is, so the process really reflected that. Every day, nine times out of 10, it was night shoots, working from 7 p.m. to 7 a.m. The rate and the pace of work was very adrenalized. It was very focused. And I think that shows because that’s what the movie is.”
That kind of focus bleeds into the story’s atmosphere, where New York itself becomes almost like another character. “This issuch a New York moviein that way, showing you both the intensity, the anonymity, the excitement, the underbelly, the hidden corners, the urban nightscape of this city,” Ahmed says. “All of that was just a big part of making the movie, and I think that’s a big part of what audiences will be transported to.”
When asked why he’s drawn to characters who exist at the edges of society, Ahmed pauses before responding. “I’ve always been interested in playing outsiders. I think that may be because I spent a lot of my life feeling like an outsider, like a lot of people do, like a lot of creative people do, as well. A lot of artists look at society from the inside out, and so they occupy this kind of no-man’s land space in a culture. That might be why I’m kind of drawn to them.”
I’ve always been interested in playing outsiders.
While it’s also how he “used to think” of himself and these characters, now what he dwells on isn’t about being on the outside or inside, but about “making your own space” and not being stuck in the binaries of a system. “Being yourself, first and foremost,” Ahmed sums up. “Not letting whether you’re on one side or the other side of that threshold determine your identity, but actually maintain your own sense of space, your own values, your own perspective internally.”
It’s also one of the things he’s applying to his own production company, Left Handed Films, and the projects he’s putting together. “I’m interested in characters who don’t easily fit into one space or box, and maybe that’s because I’ve always felt like that.”
Being an “outsider” used to have a negative connotation, but Ahmed wants to reframe it more positively as “people who just have their own space,” an aspect of creativity that he’s particularly interested in when it comes to character.
Ahmed’s Rhythm Beneath the Roles
WhileRelayand his next projects are keeping Ahmed squarely extending his craft through every role, there’s another question hovering around the multitalented performer: when will he bring his music back into the spotlight? “I’m cooking up some stuff currently,” he says. “I’m hungry to make music again. It’s charged for me too.”
It’s no small thing, though. From his solo record,Microscope, to the politically sharp albumCashmere(released with theSwet Shop Boys) to a blistering personal record that became both an album and an Oscar-winning short calledThe Long Goodbye, Ahmed (or rather,Riz MC) successfully created a space for himself on the UK rap scene long before Hollywood. Over the years, he has rapped on festival stages, collaborated withMassive Attack, and seen his version of “Immigrants (We Get the Job Done)” fromThe Hamilton Mixtapewin an MTV Video Music Award.
Music, for Ahmed, has always been the most direct channel. “It’s my unfiltered voice, and that connection on stage means a lot to me. Film is collaborating on a massive scale. But music is much more direct — straight from my thoughts to the page to the mic — it’s much more pure as an expression of my own voice.”
We are all just vessels for feeling — our own, or others.
Having his performance set to music brings out a “different, more primal energy” as well. “Acting can be more technical in a way — even if you’re dealing with strong emotions and drawing from your raw experience, there are parameters to that process. Again, because it’s such a collaboration. Music is much more naked and freewheeling for me.”
The rhythm of a rap battle, the pounding drums ofSound of Metal, the quiet pulse ofRelay— it all threads through. “I feel that whatever is going on in your heart, or mind, or your own life, it finds a way into the work. And the reverse is also true. I don’t think you can hide from that swell of feeling. It either comes out in a scene or a song, or in your own life,” he says. “We are all just vessels for feeling — our own, or others. Even if we try to conceal or control it — and we often do — it will come out.”
Maybe that’s the secret with Ahmed. He isn’t just carving out a space for himself; he’s scoring it with something you may feel long after the scene fades.
