Interview: Riz Ahmed Plays Hamlet in New British South Asian Shakespeare Film

Riz Ahmed has spent his career breaking boundaries in all media, from his Emmy-winning turn in The Night Of to his Oscar-nominated performance in Sound of Metal, and even perforing as a rapper under the moniker Riz MC.

Now he’s taking on Shakespeare’s Hamlet, and once again, he’s making it feel entirely his own.

Adapted by Michael Lesslie and directed by Aneil Karia, Ahmed’s collaborator on the Oscar-winning short The Long Goodbye, this bold cinematic reimagining sets Hamlet’s tragedy in London’s South Asian community, pulsating with the rhythm of contemporary life while staying true to the poetry of of the original text. Ahmed pours every ounce of his intelligence, vulnerability, and intensity into the role, accompanied on screen by Morfydd Clark (Ophelia), Joe Alwyn (Laertes), Timothy Spall (Polonius), Art Malik (Claudius), and Sheeba Chaddha (Gertrude).

As Hamlet hits North American cinemas, we caught up with Ahmed about first falling in love with Hamlet as a teenager, how working with Karia shaped his approach to the language, and what it’s like finally stepping into the role he’s been dreaming of for years.

This conversation has been condensed and edited for clarity.

Was there a moment in your life when the play Hamlet became personal for you?
It was when I was given the play as a 16, 17-year-old at school by an incredible English teacher that I fell in love with it. As a teenager, it was so relatable. Hamlet feels like how I felt then, and how I think many of us feel right now: like the world is losing its god-damn mind. “Is it me, or has the world gone crazy?” That’s the feeling at the heart of the play. We read it, we studied it, and I loved it. I was into rap. I could see lots of things from my own South Asian culture being brought to life in this ancient British play. There were so many levels. It blew my mind about who these stories belong to. When I saw Kenneth Branagh’s version, I was like, “I want to do my own one day.”

What did you learn from your collaboration with Aneil on The Long Goodbye that influenced the way you approached Hamlet from a language point of view?
It was really seeing how Aneil bridged the tones of the visceral action verses the poetry. He has a way of making the poetic feel raw and the raw feel poetic. That’s his jam. That was what we needed for this version. We knew we needed to find someone who could bridge and blend those tones, and who could also understand the movement and flow and rhythm. He’s directed some of the most iconic British rap videos in the last 10 years. We wanted this to embrace the rhythm of the language whilst making it feel contemporary, and he understood all of that implicitly.

What does setting Hamlet within the British South Asian community bring out in the storytelling?
We set it there because we were trying to answer the question of how to make it feel real. There are only certain communities and settings you can put it in. The question of who you can and can’t marry being a family decision, or everyone squabbling over the family business, plus thinking about ghosts in the afterlife and spirit world, is real. Those are cultural traditions. Plus, marrying your sister-in-law if your brother dies. So it was just like, well, how do you take these key plot pointst and themes and make them feel super modern? You have to put it in one of those settings, right? And it grew out from there.

That’s what blew my mind when I read it as a teenager. I was like, “Man, this is just like growing up in northwest London as a brown kid.” And it’s about a Danish prince, written by a British guy from Stratford-upon-Avon. That’s the incredible thing about it.

Would you ever do Hamlet on stage?
Possibly, yeah. I’m probably too old to do it on stage. I was just about pushing 40 when I did it, and I think that’s probably acceptable. But I’ve done my Hamlet. I spent 15 years trying to put it together and living with it. Hamlet’s an intense guy, man. I’m going to leave it to someone else.