Riz Ahmed

Um, and then it was when I met my co-showrunner, Ben Carlin, we put the writer's room together and all this kind of stuff.

We realized actually the perfect symbol, um,

um for this show is is James Bond and that was partly also because my name had been mentioned in relation to James Bond casting in some articles and and stuff over the years so in the meta kind of spirit of this show we're trying to be as meta as possible and um and have fun with that actually that's the perfect symbol you know it's a perfect symbol of for a character who wants to be anything other than himself who would he want to be he'd want to be James Bond

Yeah, well, you know, we don't really want to come up with any answers.

I have none, you know.

I really want to kind of like explore the different sides of the representation conversation in that moment, really, you know.

I think it's an important conversation.

I also think it has its limits.

I also think it's been weaponized and turned into an economy in some ways and a competitive race, you know, representation, merchantry.

And I think it also can sometimes be a distraction from real systemic change.

You know, the tokenism of window dressing can hide like bigger issues that lie beneath sometimes.

So I think there's an interesting kind of back and forth that they have there.

there's really kind of getting into some of that nitty gritty, but again, without answers, just trying to kind of put it all out there.

But I think what's really interesting actually is what's underneath that conversation is a personal relationship about, you know,

This is a conversation between my character Shah and his ex Yasmin, played by the amazing Ritu Arya from Umbrella Academy and Polite Society.

And really what's going on there, underneath the kind of socio-political think piece jousting, is two ex-lovers who are trying to jab at each other and push and pull and look for validation and get one up on each other because they're hurt.

because they both feel like the other has left them behind in some way.

And what was really important to me more than anything is that this show didn't exist in a conceptual space.

It's about characters.

It's about relationships.