Riz Ahmed

And that thing you were is maybe, you know, a version of yourself you need to evolve out of.

But we often feel pulled between those two polarities.

Oh, man, I started kind of scrambling down ideas for this show in 2014.

And I started doing that because, as I said, the gap between my public and private self started becoming so big and so stressful, they actually started feeling kind of hilarious.

I'll give you an example.

Yeah, like the week that it got revealed that, you know, OK, I'm in the new Star Wars and they released a cast photograph of us all on set.

That same week, I got banned from my local supermarket for suspected shoplifting.

because my washing machine had broken only clean clothes I had were flip-flops bright pink swim shorts a bright green puffer jacket and a tank top I'm dragging a massive bag of dirty clothes around to the laundromat I remember it's my brother's birthday I haven't got him a cake I go to Tesco's I'm trying to get him a cake they got no cake I buy a frozen pizza with birthday candles I'm

I'm at checkout.

It seems like an insane thing I'm buying anyway.

It's like, yeah, birthday candles and pizza.

I'm dressed insanely.

I've got this massive laundry bag and I forgot to beep it properly on the checkout and...

another pizza and it goes off and security like yeah this you look this person looked kind of shady and we get into a back and forth and i'm so frustrated at one point i go dude i'm not shoplifting i'm star wars man and they go okay this person is definitely crazy and uh you're banned you're never coming back here it's just an example about like the messy chaos of who we really are versus the image of success that's somewhere out there publicly and again

That's not just true for an actor.

That's true of everyone who's posting their best selfie on Instagram, you know?

So I started jotting down these little stories to try and just process them and make sense of them.

I knew there was something in these contradictions and juxtapositions that was about me making sense of my own experience.

Um, but also that just felt kind of universal if I could just get a handle on it.

And so I spent many years jotting down these, um, these ideas.