Riz Ahmed’s ‘Bait’ Is About James Bond — But Mostly About Shame

Riz Ahmed says the perfect Eid, the celebration at the end of Ramadan, is a gorgeous morning filled with fast-breaking, family, and peace. Unfortunately, that Eid doesn’t exist in real life.

“It’s completely unrealistic!” Ahmed tells Rolling Stone by Zoom from London. “First of all, on the perfect Eid, everyone agrees what day Eid is and there’s no quibbling over it. My Eid clothes I have pre-chosen, ironed, set out the night before, and the shalwar kameez that I’m wearing is not something that was sent over from Pakistan by an auntie that is three sizes too big with the creases down the middle I can never iron out. I get to the mosque on time and there isn’t a crazy overflow onto the pavement and I don’t miss the prayer. The rest of it normally does happen because you just go and see family, but it’s that morning pocket. It’s always carnage.”

It’s that messy, all-over-the-place Eid that Ahmed taps into for his new Prime series Bait, which follows struggling actor Shah Latif (Ahmed) and the Bond audition that turns his family’s holiday celebration upside down. Ahmed has spent the past week promoting the show, which premiered on March 25, and the schedule is clear in his face. He’s excited. He’s also bone tired. “You’ve seen my one flaw,” he jokes as grabs a tissue next to his computer. “I have a runny nose, but only for today!”

Ahmed has built a reputation in Hollywood for never broadcasting his next move. He’s a British Pakistani rapper who got early recognition for his political hip-hop group the Swet Shop Boys. Then he entered the Star Wars-verse in the 2016 blockbuster Rogue One, won an Emmy for the true-crime HBO drama The Night Of, became a comic book villain in Venom, scored a best actor Oscar nomination for his performance as a hearing-impaired drummer in Sound of Metal, and won an Oscar for his live-action short film The Long Goodbye. But in Bait — where Ahmed pulls triple duty as creator, executive producer, and star — much of Shah’s story comes from specific aspects of Ahmed’s life, making the series perhaps his most personal project to date.

“As I started to become more known, particularly in America, this distance between the chaotic, messy vulnerability of our actual lives and the public version of ourselves that we perform was increasing for me,” Ahmed explains. “Someone told me, ‘The distance between your public and private self is how much shame you carry.’ I thought, ‘I want to make a subversive comedy within that playground of shame.’ I want to be really bold and make it as unapologetically personal as possible, no matter how scary that felt in the process.”

Bait begins with a massive failure. Shah, an actor who’s tried several times to break through, is given a life-changing opportunity to audition to be the next James Bond. It’s a full-costume screen test with the weapons, the villain, and the camera trained on the film’s climactic monologue. And he absolutely biffs it. But when some sly maneuvering on his part gets his photo and name in the tabloids as a Bond frontrunner, the chaos that follows takes over the days leading up to Eid — the most important holiday of the year for his British Pakistani family. There are security threats, online chatter, even a bloody pig’s head sent to his family’s door. (More on that later.) And as Shah tries to land the role, public scrutiny and feelings of inadequacy well up. What starts as a simple comedy about identity and imposter syndrome quickly shifts into a violent psychological thriller about government surveillance, paranoia, and personhood.

“With comedy, it bypasses people’s analytical brain and goes straight to their gut,” Ahmed says. “You can bring people across cultural or even linguistic barriers with comedy, because there’s something just visceral about it. And you can do it in a way that is very disarming, even if you want to be confronting.”

While Shah’s story is front and center, the show’s framework relies on the cultural understanding that surrounds the role of James Bond, particularly in the U.K. “Bond is a symbol of aspiration and ambition and achievement,” Ahmed says. “We wait for new James Bonds like we wait for new monarchs in this country, in the world over. It’s a coronation. It’s like having a new pope.” But the Bond piece actually entered the picture only once the script was almost finished. Ahmed says that as he was trying to think harder about the specifics of the immigrant experience, he realized his own story — and the story he was trying to tell — wasn’t just a comedy. It was a spy thriller.

“Surveillance, suspicion, paranoia, being chased by enemies or critics, the endless mission of approval and validation of the institution — these are the organic ingredients of our [immigrant] lives,” he says. “And it just so happens it fits in the vessel of James Bond.”

The Ian Fleming character is heavily guarded by its famously litigious producers, so much so that all of Ahmed’s friends and collaborators told him it would be impossible to include 007 in the show. “I’m putting my skin in the game, like maybe the universe will give me some skin back,” Ahmed remembers. After he sent an email and the script to longtime Bond producer and executive Barbara Broccoli, the two sat down for lunch. “She said, ‘You know what? I love it,” Ahmed recalls. “She understood that Bond is a symbol in it. She’s such a class act.” It was a yes on one condition — the show couldn’t depict or mention her at all. It was a done deal.

In addition to Bond, Bait features another British institution in the form of Sir Patrick Stewart. The famed Star Trek, X-Men, and stage actor stars — drumroll, please — as the voice of the aforementioned pig’s head sent to Shah’s family. While initially considered a disrespectful threat, the decapitated bovine quickly becomes the ever-present soundtrack of Shah’s fears about failure, arrest, and death. The role was always written to be Stewart’s voice, but once again, Ahmed was convinced the legendary actor would say no. Instead, he got to add Stewart’s name to the family-like cast of Guz Khan, Ritu Arya, Sheeba Chaddha — even teaching him British slang like those for a crew or close friends, mandem.

“It was another moment of grace and incredible luck and generosity of the universe and Patrick Stewart himself that he said yes,” Ahmed says. “I cherish that man.”

Thanks to Ahmed’s musical background, the soundtrack for the series was an incredibly important process for the actor. He calls the music of the series a “tonal high-wire act” that matches the story’s freewheeling and genre-bouncing energy. Inspired by the soundtracks of Black Panther, Uncut Gems, and Birdman, it’s loaded with references and inspiration from late-Seventies Pakistani psychedelic funk and early-Eighties Bollywood disco. (“We’re really in this period where the drugs must have been amazing.”) There are tracks from U.K. rapper AJ Tracy, the late electronic-pop icon SOPHIE, an Urdu version of “Sweet Dreams” recorded by Bay Area Punjabi producer Talwiinder, and an original Bond-esque theme “The Price of It All,” written and performed by Jorja Smith.

“The show shifts gears from comedy to drama, from romance to action to thriller, and blends it through with surreal elements. So the music in the show was so crucial to forming a kind of glue around that,” Ahmed says. “Scores like this serve like a Greek chorus. You’re aware that a fable is being told. And they heighten the story into something fabulous.”

With its tone and genre zigzagging, Bait may not be for everyone. But Ahmed is rightfully proud of what he’s created and already onto his next big thing — filming Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s Digger alongside Tom Cruise, who Ahmed calls “one of the most unique people with the most dedicated work ethics.” With Bait out in the world now, he has a clear hope that its very existence, and the intention that led from concept to final frame, will make positive waves in the TV industry for other creatives who want to take a chance on themselves.

“It can be a risk-averse industry at times,” Ahmed says. “But I think taking those big swings, defying expectations, subverting the norm is usually the thing that punches through. And if we’re willing to do that, any story has the possibility of cutting through the noise.”