Riz Ahmed
๐ค SpeakerAppearances Over Time
Podcast Appearances
And then when we got to the very end of the process, we actually found a way of summing up the whole show in one word.
And that word is bait.
I want to unpack it for a minute.
So bait is a British slang word, which means being blatant and in your face and attention seeking.
That's what my character is doing for much of the series.
Bait is an online term about trolling or provoking people online.
That's a big part of our show as well, that element.
Bait in Urdu means your loyalty or your allegiance.
And that is something that Shah is contending with.
It's home versus ambition, east versus west.
Bait in Arabic and Hebrew means home.
And so much of this show is a love letter to home and it's about family and how far do you travel from home in order to please home or help home, you know.
And then, of course, there's a big spy thriller element to our show and bait is something that's used as part of a trap.
And so it's that.
So it's a weird thing where only in retrospect, we realize like, oh my God, we accidentally stumbled on the perfect title for this that actually communicates the entire layer cake of this show.
It is all those flavors.
And the word bait means all those things.
Do you know what?