He stars in the new movie, "Sound of Metal,"
which is streaming now on Amazon Prime Video.
Here is Riz Ahmed.
Riz, it is great to see you. -How you doing, man?
Yeah, you, too. Thanks for having me.
-Thanks so much for being on the show and coming back.
I have to say congratulations.
It's some of the best news I read.
You got married a few months ago.
-I did, yeah. I got married recently.
Yeah, thank you.
-That's major.
Now, look, there are stories
that said that this was a secret wedding,
and I know you wanted to clear this up.
Was it a secret wedding?
-Are you saying that 'cause I didn't invite you, Jimmy?
That's what's going on? -Yes. That's exactly right.
-I sent you the invite, man.
With COVID, FedEx messed it up.
I wanted you there, bro. -Okay.
-You know what it is? It's a weird one, isn't it?
I guess cause we live in a social media age,
if you don't, like, get on the megaphone about stuff,
it's like it's a secret.
But I never know how much is over-sharing.
Like, I'm into matcha lattes,
but that's just never come up.
I'm not a secret matcha latte drinker.
-[ Laughs ] Yeah, exactly, yeah. Well, it's not a secret.
-It doesn't come up. You're not sure what really to offer.
But it was kind of interesting, you know, doing it
with COVID and everything going on.
Obviously, kept it super intimate and socially distanced,
with just like hardly anyone there, really.
Did it in a backyard, which is nice in lots of ways.
And I think the nicest thing about it
was you didn't have 500 aunties
hanging around you, pinching your cheeks.
No disrespect to the aunties, but Asian weddings are big.
You always got these people crawling out the woodworks
who I think are kind of probably imposters.
They just smell the kebabs on the street and just wander in.
Like, "Hey, I knew you when you were a kid."
-"Do I know you?" Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
-Exactly. -Tell me a little bit
about your wife, if you can.
How'd you meet? -Oh, yeah, yeah. Sure, man.
Yeah, well, her name's Fatima Farheen Mirza.
She's an amazing novelist.
And we met so randomly
while actually I was preparing for this role,
for "Sound of Metal," when I was in New York.
Um, we just both sat down at the same table in a cafe
where we both turned up to write.
We were both, like, jostling over the same laptop plug point.
It was like a very modern way of meeting.
And we struck up a friendship,
and then we reconnected down the line.
But it's weirdly like one of the many, uh, things
about preparing for this role that was so special.
It just brought a lot of goodness into my life.
Obviously, I met Fatima for the first time
and met so many people in the deaf community
that have become friends.
And there's just something about this whole period
around this film that was kind of life-changing.
-Yeah. Talk to me about this.
"Sound of Metal" came out a few weeks ago,
and you've been getting incredible reviews.
Uh, you won a Gotham Award on Monday night.
Congratulations.
-Thank you, man. Thanks.
-What's it like to attend an awards show virtually?
-Super weird. -It is, right?
-It's weird because, you know,
no one's really sure exactly when they're on camera.
So you actually get a couple of seconds
of people's unadulterated, you know, unvarnished reactions
where they're like --
Oh, wait, I'm on. -Yeah, oh, I'm on, yeah.
Or else they're texting someone like,
"Wait, what? I'm on?"
-Yeah, so it's kind of cool in a way,
'cause you see a very intimate reaction.
-Dude, you crushed this one.
In this movie, you play a drummer
who starts to lose his hearing.
And you spent months learning to play the drums,
but you also learned some sign language, as well.
What is it like learning both at the same time?
-It was a challenge for sure. It was quite daunting at times.
I was pretty sure I wouldn't get there.
Our director, Darius Marder, has such a unique kind of vision.
You won't believe this is his first film.
He said he wants it all to be as for real as possible.
So when I'm playing the drums on-screen,
he wants me to be really playing the drums.
When I'm signing in American Sign Language,
I'm improvising with deaf actors
so I have to be -- you know, some level of fluency.
And so we just spent seven months every day
just learning sign language, learning the drums.
And like I said, it was challenging,
but I learned a lot from it.
And in particular, I say that the deaf community,
and my sign instructor, Jeremy Lee Stone,
who became a good friend of mine,
he kind of taught me the true meaning of listening.
You know, the deaf community taught me the true meaning
of listening and of communication.
It's not just something you do with your ears.
Listening is something you do with your whole body.
It's about holding space
for someone else's energy with your attention.
And in a way, I feel like Jeremy's the best listener
I've ever met. You know? -Wow.
-So a lot of, kind of, those lessons really stayed with me.
-Did you think the drums
were, like, "Oh, that's going to be good"?
'Cause you're also a rapper and a musician,
so you're like, "Oh, I can probably keep a couple beats."
-Yeah. I actually, really stupidly will admit,
thought that the first time I picked up the drum sticks,
I'd be like, "Alright, this will be okay."
You know, I've got this.
So bad.
Um, very different keeping time, you know, with words
as opposed to with your body.
The biggest challenge I had with playing the drums was,
I only realized the night before we were filming that scene,
big opening scene in the film when I'm drumming,
that I was doing this to keep time.
-What? -Like -- Yeah.
I was using my jaw as a metronome.
-[ Laughs ]
-[ Humming ]
-As you're playing? -And no one thought
to tell me this in seven months of preparation.
They go, "We thought you knew.
We thought it was an acting choice."
And I'm like, "No.
What are you doing?" -"Hey, you have to tell me."
-So, literally, the day we shot it,
I'm using 90% of my bandwidth
just trying to keep this guy
from not doing weird stuff.
It was weird. You know?
-You got enough to worry about. You're going, "Okay."
But it's also you're playing fast, too.
Uh, you know, you did something with this movie
that is an interesting move --
I'm sure the director thought of this -- but the audio.
Sometimes the audience can hear everything
through your character.
And it was -- -Yeah.
-How did they do that?
-Yeah. Again, our director, Darius Marder,
first-time director, but you would not believe it
when you see his film. Such a bold choice.
He basically wanted the audience
to be inside my character's head.
So, as I'm losing my hearing,
the audience starts to lose, you know, clarity
on what other characters are saying and what's happening.
So it really puts you right there
and makes it quite a physical experience.
And the way they did it was crazy.
On set, after every scene,
the sound recordist would record the sound of my heart,
see what my heartbeat was like after that scene.
-Wow.
-Would ask me to swallow,
lick my lips, blink, breathe,
record everything about what's going on inside my body
so that the sound design literally puts you in my body,
and you can --
You're almost inside my head.
-It's amazing.
For people that haven't seen the movie,
can you tell everyone what it's about?
-Yeah. I mean, in short,
it's the story of my character, Ruben Stone,
and his girlfriend, Lou, played by the amazing Olivia Cooke,
and they live together in this RV, in this touring band.
They're a duo in this band.
And all of a sudden, Ruben loses his hearing,
and that threatens his band, his relationship,
his idea of who he thinks he is.
Um, but when he starts to kind of be accepted
and almost steadied by this deaf community,
this community of recovering addicts,
'cause he has a history of addiction,
he finds this kind of peace and balance,
but it would mean saying goodbye to his old life.
So he has to choose between
this new kind of equilibrium he's found
or getting his old life back.
-I want to show everyone a clip.
Here's Riz Ahmed in "Sound of Metal."
Take a look.
Riz Ahmed. "Sound of Metal"
is streaming now on Amazon Prime Video.
Thank you again for coming on the show, and best to your wife.
-Thanks for having me, man. Much love.