Riz Ahmed
๐ค SpeakerAppearances Over Time
Podcast Appearances
I'll really cherish that experience.
Yeah, it's really interesting.
I'm like many people felt like Shakespeare is the epitome of everything I'm on the outside of.
It doesn't belong to me.
And I've got a government assisted place to a private school where I felt like an outsider for many different reasons.
And I was lucky enough to have an English teacher called Mr. Roseblade, who was a white Jewish middle-aged man from a different place in the UK.
I thought we had nothing in common, but he spoke fluent Punjabi.
brought me Hamlet and said, you know, this thing, this story, this character, it's at the heart of the establishment that you feel so alienated from in many ways.
But have a read of it.
You might recognize yourself in this character.
And I did, like millions of people have, right?
Hamlet being a character who feels out of place.
Hamlet himself feels like an outsider.
He feels like he doesn't belong, like no one understands.
And it really spoke to me as a teenager.
But more than that, what I realized was, hang on a minute, this Hamlet story,
set in medieval Denmark actually is exactly like growing up in Wembley.