Riz Ahmed

Thank you so much for having me back.

Do you know who you are?

You're a failure.

Yeah, I mean, so much of the show is taken from my own experience, you know.

I'm that guy who you were mentioning the night of.

I remember waking up in the middle of the night two years after I rapped on the night of and going to the mirror and redoing scenes that the whole world had already seen.

I'd already been handed awards for this performance.

I'm like, no, I got it, I got it.

got to get it right and the inner critic is such a kind of big part of this show and and you know honestly like yes the show is drawn from those experiences but it's not about being an actor it's about as you said um being caught up in a chase sequence where you're chasing acceptance and running away from your own inner critic and so we felt early on in the show you needed to see just how

mean shah's inner voice can be about him and and i just wanted to be kind of like vulnerable and open about that i mean i've i've definitely you know i've done exactly that like i said going to the mirror redoing the scene saying you're useless you're crap you know what you're doing and i feel like that's something that is very very relatable outside of auditioning or being an actor or anything like that it's we're often our own worst critics

Yeah.

Well, I want to deal with the first part of what you said first, which is Isriz playing a character, playing himself.

And if you don't mind, I want to say something that you said to me just before we started recording the interview.

I said, look, how did you like the show?

And you said, I feel like I am Shah.

You said that, Tanya.

You said, I feel like, damn, I'm that person.

If you don't mind me saying, so many people have been saying that.

And yes, there's a lot of me and Shah, but I think actually there's a lot of Shah in all of us, more than we like to admit.

And really, the show is about this feeling that life sometimes feels like one big audition.