Riz Ahmed on Rogue One, Sweeping Reshoots, and His Breakthrough Year
Though Riz Ahmed has been working steadily over the last decade in films like Four Lions and Nightcrawler, there’s no denying that this year his career went into hyperdrive. The talented Brit landed his biggest project yet with Rogue One, where he plays former Imperial pilot Bodhi Rook, but he also led HBO’s talked-about series The Night Of, popped up in Jason Bourne and Netflix’s The OA, and added to his rap discography with the Swet Shop Boys’ Cashmere, an appearance on The Hamilton Mixtape, and the release of his own mixtape, Englistan. All of these projects would tire out an average person, but when Ahmed rang up Vulture recently to chat about Rogue One, he was upbeat and funny as he candidly discussed how much work went into making it right.
When I think about how bad 2016 was — and it was bad — the silver lining I find is that at least Riz Ahmed was in everything.
Yay! Hopefully, we don’t have to keep losing iconic pop stars and endure terrible political collapse in order for my career to progress. I feel like that’s not a fair trade for everyone else.
For you to be so well-represented in TV, film, and music this year … how does that make you feel?
I feel kind of lucky, it’s been a great couple of years. I’ve just been keeping my head down working hard like I always have. It’s just great luck that a couple of the things I’ve done lately have struck a chord with people, and now they’ve all come out around the same time. That’s the kind of stuff you can’t control, so I try not to think too much about it — instead, I think about what I’ve learned from one job to the next. Man, I can tell you I learned a lot from filming Rogue One. I hope to take that forward with me.
Tell me what you learned from this one.
I signed up for the movie not having read a script or knowing where the character sat in the movie. I’ve got to be honest, the character was a different character at that point. He had a different name and a different relationship to the rest of the team, and he really evolved once I signed on and once I started shooting, even. They decided to start expanding the role and introducing him earlier and he became more integral to the story and the rest of the team. It’s interesting, looking back, that I signed up knowing nothing, but ultimately I’d sign up for a Star Wars movie to make tea, just to be around that level of creativity.
It’s got to be flattering that they saw your performance and wanted to put you in more scenes.
Listen, I don’t want to say that’s because of anything I was doing. Maybe they just got wise to my gigantic following in the Falkland Islands [laughs]. To be honest, it speaks volumes to their approach that they allowed things to evolve in an organic and fluid way. People talk about blockbuster…
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