The New Yorker Radio Hour - Riz Ahmed Gets the Job Done

Episode Date: October 24, 2017

The British writer, activist, and rapper Riz Ahmed has had a very public life since leaving drama school to star in “The Road to Guantánamo.” He won an Emmy for playing the lead in “The Night Of,” appeared in the Star Wars film “Rogue One,” and played Hannah Horvath’s baby daddy on “Girls.” He has continued his music career as Riz MC and was featured on the song “Immigrants (We Get the Job Done)” from “The Hamilton Mixtape.” Riz has been an outspoken activist for immigrants in the U.S. and Britain, and, at this year’s New Yorker Festival, he spoke to Alexis Okeowo about how his past has shaped who he is and steered his career choices. Ahmed’s work is often political, but he resents the category of political art, which he sees as a way to marginalize viewpoints that the mainstream views with suspicion.   New Yorker Radio Hour listeners, we want to hear from you.  We have a few questions about the show and how you listen to it. The survey takes about twenty minutes, and your feedback will help us make our podcast better.  Take the survey here.

Welcome to the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. I'm glad you could join us today. We're going to do something special. Every year we put on a festival, the New Yorker Festival, a whole weekend blowout of interviews, panels, performances, screenings. It's a who's who of the people who are making news and shaping the worlds of culture, politics, journalism, food, you name it. And we're going to be bringing you the highlights of it here on the radio hour throughout the year. Staff writer Alexis Akeowo spoke with the multi-talented British artist Riz Ahmed. Ahmed won an Emmy for his performance in HBO's The Night of. He also appeared last year in Star Wars Rogue One, and he's known as a rapper, an activist. And as W magazine put it recently, the internet's boyfriend. Wait, wait, just hold up a minute, hold a minute. Backstage, you promised that this wouldn't happen. We were like, should we come out together, or do you want to come out?

afterwards. And I said, if I'm going to awkwardly sit through you, beginning me up, we ain't covered out together. I may have lied. So you stabbed me in the back, just off the jump. Thank you. Good. Trust. Yeah. So, Riz, you grew up in London. What are your strongest memories of growing up there? I read that one of your first memories was going to Pakistan at the age of two to be circumcised, and your family made a song and dance about it. She's so nice backstage And you come out

The New Yorker journalist And the fun has come out I told you that privately Yeah man That's my first memory Dr. Karim Dr. Karim He had a very powerful mustache

And Yeah it was a recurring joke Weirdly My first private joke with my parents Was like Well beat up Dr. Karim with a hockey stick Because of what he did to you And like only years later, I've realized, way to pass the buck.

Like, they went and sought out Dr. Karim to do that to me. What were you like as a kid? I was very kind of hyperactive kid. And what was your family like? Your parents moved to the UK from Pakistan in the 70s. Well, I guess I should talk a little bit about that. Migration has kind of been a part of my family's ancestry and history for a very long time, actually. And as it has for all of ours.

I'm from an ethnic group called Mohajirs. So Mohajir means North Indian, Urdu-speaking Muslim that has now moved to Pakistan, post-the-partition of India and Pakistan, which happened under the British in 1947. So ancestrally for hundreds of years, my family is North Indian from UP. And what Mohajir means is refugee.

So you've got different ethnic groups in Pakistan. You've got Baloch, you've got Sindis, you've got Bhartans, you've got Punjabi, and you've got when I'm going to do it for every the group is South Asia's complex he's going to be here one night

and and what I you know and then you've got refugees as like their own ethnic group which is kind of weird and I only really realized in recent years

that's like my identity is you know someone who leaves home to go somewhere else and that kind of fluidity of identity is something that I had to contend with a lot growing up as a kid

is something that's kind of probably why I ended up acting, and it's something that I'm very much, you know, I think about, spend a lot of time thinking about whatever medium I'm trying to create in today. So I think that was a lot of kind of growing up that and, you know, Thundercats. Right, right. And WWF wrestling. WWF, matrimand, Renishavages, is one man. So did you always want to perform?

Because, I mean, we were talking about how growing up in the 90s, the UK was kind of the cultural center of the same. South Asian diaspora. There was a lot of art making, storytelling, a lot of voices doing interesting things in music and literature at the time you were growing up. Yeah, yeah, it was interesting because we went from being kind of completely invisible in the culture, so all of a sudden when I hit my teenage years, there was this moment, not dissimilar to the kind of, you know, brown cultural moment that's taking place in the U.S. right now as a kind of response to a lot of xenophobia and Islamophobia is going on. This kind of didn't grow out so much out of a direct

kind of political moment or political backlash. But it was just really about a generation coming of age. My parents' generation saw themselves as guests in the country. For me and my generation, obviously, for many people here that are kind of third culture kids, it's like, well, this is my country, I'm entitled to be here. So there was a kind of self-confidence to British Asian culture that kind of started taking root in the 90s,

and you saw this amazing moment where, I don't know if anyone's familiar with a sitcom, it was kind of like a brown key and peal show called Goodness Gracious Me. I don't know that. So, BBC. This is so different to a rap show.

BBC. And so basically, yeah, you had this kind of moment where you had this brown sketch show that was huge and everyone was watching it, and you had Mittin Soony kind of coming to prominence as a kind of composer and musician. Talvin Singh won the coveted Mercury Music Prize. There was this kind of East London drum and bass

British Asian music scene that was coming out of East London. So it was this moment of like, all right, we've arrived, we're doing this thing. We're going to make this new thing. But didn't quite pan out like that. So you went to drama school. You left a little bit early to take your first role in the road to Guantanamo,

which is a docu drama based on a true story, based on three British Muslim friends who mistakenly ended up in one. Guantanamo. Were you a member of Al Qaeda? No. How long were you in Afghanistan? In Palestine, how could speak English, yeah.

I'm British. You speak English, you don't need a translator. I'm British. Are you an observant Muslim? Are you good Muslim? I try to be. After one of the first screenings, you, some of the actors and some of the actors, some of the actors and some of the subjects the film was based on

were detained in a UK airport, you were interrogated about your politics, and unfortunately became the first of a series of encounters you would have with British immigration being detained, being questioned about your motives and what you're doing. I mean, what was that like? Because I later want to go into the fact that that inspired some of your music. Yeah, it was a life-changing experience at that job, because I was coming to the end of my time at drama school

and I was thinking, what the hell am I doing? You know, there's a lot of crazy stuff happening in the world right now. I feel passionately engaged in it. I want to kind of comment on it or just engage with it. And as an actor, I'm going to be playing cab driver number two. How does that work? How did those two things work? And out of the blue, I just got this phone call.

Michael Winterbottom, kind of prolific filmmaker from the UK, his casting director saw a photograph of me on the drama school website. And I've got this job and I was like, oh my God, it's an opportunity to square these two things that I love and do them both. And yeah, I did that film. It was vindication for their experience. He won an award at Berlin Film Festival, went to Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran, you know, Access of Evil World Tour. And then came and like landed back in Luton Airport. And I remember just got taken to one side, got taken into an unmarked room.

And before you know it, British, you know, ironically named intelligence. officers were kind of like putting me in, putting me in arm locks and wrist locks and kind of like shacking in my face and did you become an actor to further the Muslim struggle? Right. It's like, no, I became an actor to get girls, but didn't really work out. Instead, I'm in this fucking room with you. And like, oh, what do you think of the Iraq war and, you know, all this stuff? And the whole thing was crazy and it was just intense.

And I came out of that experience. And then some of the other boys are tipped in three themselves, the ex-Grantanamo detainees were sat there. And I was like, outrage. And I remember they just went, yeah, I know, man, it happens all the time. It happens to us all the time. Just go get breakfast.

And I was just like, wow, this is crazy. So we just leaked it to a couple of journalists, but it inspired me to write a song. This is called The Post-911 Blues. Yes, the Post-Nanamo blues, which was basically banned from radio and TV play. Yeah, I mean, this was something that kind of for me was very much a personal song. And of course it kind of was a comment on everything that was going on socially and politically that time. This was April 2006, just a year after the 7-7 bombings.

Yeah. I mean, it's, you know, it was kind of very tongue-in-cheek, you know, lyrics like, you know, we're all suspects, so what you're back. I farted and got arrested for a chemical attack. Right. You know, kind of thing is, it's Shakespeare. Is what I'm trying to say. My friends go, is it still one of us. But if I haven't shaved, they won't sit with me on the bus.

Everybody do the post-9-11 yards. Looks scared, shaking ass when a bombs go. I believe to this day that the idea of, like, art that's political and art that's not political is a fallacy. It's a dangerous fallacy, I think. Because all politics is, is a point of view on the world. and all that any piece of art is is a point of view on the world

any kind of voice or perspective that is traditionally marginalized or goes unheard is just labeled political because you're not used to being articulated so it's somehow subversive and goes against the status quo and I just think

so the idea of political art I think is exactly so what were those early editions like I mean you've talked about code switching and also about you know, a really great way of saying that there's three stages for often for a minority actor.

One, where you're playing the stereotypes, two, where you're perhaps subverting the stereotypes, and three, where you're playing a role that has nothing to do with your race or religion. That's just you're playing a guy named Bob. So what was it like navigating, realizing those categories as you're

going on those early editions and code switching and... Yeah, I mean, I guess I came into... I started my career as an actor just as like that stage two taking place when it was, you know, you've got stereotypes and you've got stories that are taking place in ethnicized terrain, but very much kind of trying to overturn those stereotypes, such as Roto Gran Tanamo or like a song like Postal Living Blues or a film I did called Four Lions is very much jumping on that bandwagon but to try and overturn it or redirect it to

somewhere with more nuance. And that's when I kind of started. But then that third stage of like playing someone who's like just a guy, I feel like I really misarticulated that. when I was talking about that analogy because that third stage isn't necessarily someone who's just called Bob. Could also be someone called Naz. Okay. It could also be someone called Rizwan. It's just about, you know, the cultural specificity or the kind of ethnicity of that character isn't front and center in a way that is about like they turn into an issue.

So I think the Holy Grail is very specific work but somehow is unshaping unshackled from like the capital M minority kind of issue-laden portrayal, you know. Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. You know, not long after that, you started filming the incredible, devastating HBO series The Night of, something you called an endurance test, both physically and emotionally. It's a story of a young Pakistani-American man from Queens named Nas, who's unjustly accused of murder and his resulting odyssey

into the American criminal justice system. I sit there every day. I watch you fight for me. I think, why is you doing this? I mean, it's not for the money because you're not getting paid, I'm sure. At least not much. It's my job.

And it's your right. Is that all? That scene is that it feels like you're doing so many things at once. You're being vulnerable, but then also possibly manipulative, possibly seductive. And it becomes harder to read the character as the series progresses. As an actor of South Asian descent, you know, you're often asked to talk about diversity.

You're often asked to talk about representation. But there's a difference, right, between representation and diversity. And what are the pitfalls of... Well, it's interesting because there's pitfalls to both those, right? Diversity is like this idea of, you know, you've got your burger. And you've got the optional extra on the sides, you've got the fries, and that's diversity. If you're one of the only South Asian or African American or Latino or gay or trans portrayals on screen at a given moment, or in writing at a given moment, you carry a gigantic burden

on your shoulders to try and kind of represent this incredibly diverse experience. Exactly. And so diversity gives you that get-out. It's like, no, it's diverse, you know, but it represents. is like you're punching through, but with all this stuff you're carrying on your back. Yeah. I want to talk a bit about your music career as RIS MC. You know, a lot of people obviously have seen you

on the Hamilton mixtape talking truthfully about how immigrants get it done or get the job done. But, I mean, you had a long career before that. You know, the best thing about the Hamilton mixtape wasn't that for me that was like top the charts and all this stuff? was like, my godson and goddaughter, every time they now, like, tidy their room or, like, pull the flush on the toilet, they say, immigrants, we get the job done.

And that's great because, you know, you're reframing immigrants is synonymous with superhero. Right, right. Which is a good thing. In terms of my influences, I mean, I don't know how many of you would be familiar with the kind of UK underground dance music culture, but it's something that I'm, one of the things I think we're proudest of in the UK. So the kind of culmination of this journey since the kind of

mid-80s to today, I guess it's going from jungle to drum and bass, to garage, to grime, to dubstep, and then back to this kind of grime revival, is, I think, uniquely UK, and that it could only exist in a city as multicultural as London.

And so that was really the cocktail I grew up on, alongside I guess, you know, US rap. I mean, kind of, you know, that was definitely a big kind of template for us. Right. Do you like to do a piece for us? Yeah, okay, yeah.

So many of you will have heard this before, but I make a point to always perform it because when I first wrote this, I didn't perform it for about three and a half years because I was worried what people would think about it. And so I perform it a lot because it reminds me to try and not think about that.

It's called Sour Times. I wrote this one we were doing the road to Guantanamo. In these sour times, please allow me to vouch for mine. Bitter taste in my mouth, spit it out with a rhyme. And yo, I'm losing my religion to tomorrow's headlines. Granthanamo, sorry, bro?

Nah, nothing is fine. And now it's post-7. Why are they calling it that? They're trying to link it to New York like we're all under attack from the same big, bad guy, but it's taken a f***. Because the truth is, terrorism isn't what you think it is. There ain't no supervillainting these attacks from some base. The truth is so much scarier and harder to face.

See, there's thousands of angry young men that are lost, sidelined in the economy of marginal cost. They think there's no point in putting balance up in the box. They've got no place in this system and no faith in its cogs. They're easy targets to be getting brainwashed by these knobs who say that spilling innocent blood is pleasing a lot. of God? Well, it sounds good when you don't see no justice or jobs. The gas bills are piling up, but all the oil's getting robbed. So David's taking out, Goliath and his wife and his dog segregated,

castrated, now we see who's on top. So see, it ain't religious faith that's causing these crimes. It's losing faith in democratic free market designs. It's no coincidence. The bombers came from ghettos up north, and the way that Bush and Blair talked gave a lost boy a cause. Then double standards get amangled both at home and abroad. There's a monopoly on pay. It's a monopoly on That's why they forge their own swords. The misguided, turned violent, strap themselves up with bombs, but they're still cowards

because they ain't here when the backlash is on. So when he's sour times, please allow me to vouch for mine. Bitter taste in my mouth, spit it out with a rhyme. Hey, yo, I'm losing my religion to tomorrow's headlines. Abu Ghraves, sorry, mate, no, nothing, it's fine. So all the man's at one to say

that my religion has to change that we're stuck in the bygone age. It's time to set the vinyl straight. Don't you think it's kind of strange that all this terror outrage These last gasp castaways These bastards away Turned up in the last decade

When Islam has been the way For millions from back in the day Instead of thinking that we're crazy Investigate just what it says Fast, help the poor and pray Go Mecca, be said fast in faith That's the basics, that's the base So how did we get here today?

Well interpretations always change Today they read with rage Binge hardened up Dispiration's kind of f*** Makes you use a book of peace As Weapons in a Rock so listen terrorism isn't caused by religion

over an old school vision of Islam it's against the Quran and it's a new innovation caused by mash up situations that's what makes them turn to arms the problem is modern and it's all local factors dictatorships and justices and wars cause fatwas

so when he's sour times please allow me to vouch for mine bitter taste and my mouth spit it out with a rhyme I'm losing my religion to tomorrow's headlines but it's fine Well, Riz, I want to thank you so much for joining us tonight. And I want to thank you all for coming.

Thank you. Thank you very much, guys. Thank you. Riz Ahmed, speaking with Staff Rider, Alexis Akeowo at the New Yorker Festival earlier this month. And that wraps it up for today. Thank you so much for joining us. I'm David Remnick. Have a great week.

The New Yorker Radio Hour is a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. Our theme music was composed and performed by Merrill Garbus of Tune Yards with additional music by Alexis Quadrado. This episode was produced with special help from the staff of the New Yorker Festival, Rhonda Sherman, Alexis Goldberg, David Ohana, Bradley G., and Hillary Leicter Griffin. The New Yorker Radio Hour is supported in part by the Cherina Endowment Fund.