'Bait' Stars Riz Ahmed and Guz Khan Talk Tonal Balancing Act of Their Sharp New Satire
the two powerhouses discuss tone and their creative relationship working on their new bond-related meta comedy.
Guz Khan (left) and Riz Ahmed (right) in Prime Video’s Bait.
Death, taxes, and speculation about the next actor to don the James Bond tuxedo. For 60-plus years, the tuxedoed super-spy has charmed audiences across the world, and in the internet age, speculation often runs rampant about which British actor will step into stardom by way of His Majesty’s Secret Service. Though Daniel Craig was the active Bond from 2005-2021, that certainly didn’t stop tabloids and internet forums alike from running amuck with names like Idris Elba, Tom Hardy and Henry Cavill as Craig’s successors. Enter Shahjehan Latif, mostly known as Shah, (Riz Ahmed), a struggling London-based actor who finds himself in a frenzy that encompasses his public and personal images, a family crisis, an MI5 intelligence plot, and impossible comedic situations. What I’ve just described is the plot of Bait, a new 6 episode meta-comedy conceived by Riz, who serves as lead actor, show-runner, and writer. The parallels between Riz’s name being thrown into the Bond mix over the years and the series itself are indelible, with such scenarios serving as inspiration for the series.
Beyond the Bond of it all, Bait emerges as a beautifully human story that isn’t afraid to engage in ideological discourses about South Asian and Muslim representation, culture, and even its very flawed lead character in Shah. Ahmed, best known for his dramatic turns in the likes of Sound Of Metal and The Night Of, gets to flex his comedic muscles in a way that feels so authentic and truthful to the character’s journey. He is joined in the series by comedy savant Guz Khan (Man Like Mobeen, Taskmaster) who plays Shah’s close cousin/surrogate brother Zulfi, who runs his own burgeoning ride-share company that is host for many of the series’ wonderful comedic bits.
Riz and Guz spoke with FilmSpeak about their collaborative relationship, Bait’s many narrative elements, and what they hope audiences ultimately take away from their new series.
FilmSpeak: The concept for this series is brilliant in its own right, but I loved that it’s almost also like a trojan horse for this show to pack in a myriad of ideas about representation, self-identity, family, fame, so on and so forth, and doesn’t lose itself in the Bond of it all. I'm wondering what kinds of conversations you guys had with incorporating all of these different tonal elements and making sure they were all able to coexist so cohesively?
Riz Ahmed: “The main conversations we heard from different people initially with our scripts were like, ‘Tonally, is this going to be all over the place?’. I remember a conversation with my agent, who said, ‘You know, this is the way to do it. Don’t apologize for going left and going right, and going straight down the middle”. I wanted to give people a full meal. Me and my wife sit down to watch something, [and] we never watch anything. I’ll want to watch a comedy, she wants to watch a rom-com, I’ll want to watch an action-thriller, she’ll want to watch a drama. I want to give people a meal, where you have elements of all of it, that’s what excites me. I like watching things where I’m not sure where it’s going to go. I like watching things where one minute, you’re laughing, the next minute, you’re crying. So we wanted to do our best to go and do that. We weren’t trying to create a uniform tone, we wanted to give them that whiplash, tonally, and have them leaning in to see where it was going to go, so that was very deliberate. It was challenging. I hope, and the feedback we’ve got, [says] we managed to at least attempt that, in a way that people are responding to, and that’s a credit to the incredible writers, incredible actors, the team, all of them. Just trying to work really hard at that.”
FS: There’s a great line from Shah to Yasmin that holds many meanings in episode 4: “I live with who people need me to be”. Guz, You’ve obviously created a semi-personal comedy series before with the brilliant Mobeen, and wore many different hats there as a lead actor, writer and producer. How did your previous experience help you to become the collaborator people like Riz needed you to be for a similar kind of undertaking with Bait?
Guz Khan: “It’s twofold, because there’s one kind of project where you go in being hired to create or improve a character or improve a script, but on this one in particular, Riz is a friend. Riz is a friend outside of the show, so you’re riding out to create a kind of character that you hope fits into the world that he’s envisioned, the character he’s created for you, and also, just as my mate, we need to make sure this bangs. Riz is someone that has been in this industry for a long time. We’ve seen him star in so many roles and light up the screen in so many different ways, but the guy that I know is a guy that makes me laugh! He makes me laugh a lot. So, to see him in a comedy, one that’s his own vehicle, that he gets to oversee and helm, you kind of just want to come in and help. I feel like there’s a lot of specificity within the show, and I just enjoy the fact that rarely in comedy nowadays do you see a combination of what we have as cousins, which for people outside of our community who might not know, can be closer than actual brothers. It could be the strongest relationship that you have in your lives, especially in our [South Asian] community. So, hopefully enjoy it, see the competition between them, see the sparring between them, but the undercurrent is love, and worry. “