British-Pakistani actor, activist, rapper and a member of Swet Shop Boys, Riz Ahmed shot to fame with HBO’s outstanding mini-series The Night Of (2016) for which he also bagged an Emmy Award. Since then, he has not only featured on the cover of Time Magazine as one of the 100 most influential people across the world but has starred in a Stars Wars film, The Reluctant Fundamentalist and the most recent Venom, among others.
Coming from a South Asian descent, Riz Ahmed has long been an outspoken advocate for greater inclusion of people of color in media and continues to speak about issues such as gender representation. He recently appeared on The Jonathan Ross Show and gave his two cents about representation and also touched on the two blockbuster films (with casts made up of mostly people of color) – Black Panther and Crazy Rich Asians.
“The two films aren’t just wins for black and Asian people,” he said, adding that it is actually a success for all of us. “When a young woman gets to speak her mind, it’s a win for all of us. If Crazy Rich Asians does really well, it’s a win for all of us. It just brings us all a bit closer together and we recognize each other within each other.”
In another show, titled The Daily Show, Ahmed asserted that he doesn’t like talking about “diversity,” as it sounds like an “added extra”. He rather prefers the term “representation.”
“It’s about representation. And representation is absolutely fundamental in terms of what we expect from our culture and from our politics. We all want to feel represented, we all want to feel seen and heard and valued,” he noted.
