MAN FOR ALL SEASONS

Getting hold of Riz Ahmed is by no means an easy feat. This year alone, he has produced and starred in a Shakespeare adaptation and a James Bond satire, done the film festival circuit to promote them, dazzled in every podcast he has appeared on and is already gearing up for his next action film. ARSHIA speaks to the actor before he boards a flight, and confirms he may just be all that the internet wants him to be.

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THE YEAR IS 2010, and in the middle of peak autumn festivities in my hometown of Kolkata, my best friend tells me about her newest crush. To my surprise, he isn't someone she stumbled upon at a Durga Pujo pandal, like every other year. It's a young indie actor called Riz Ahmed from a film I've never heard of: Four Lions (2010). She had discovered the movie-and Ahmed on a 4chan stroll, the OG Reddit for millennials, and watched it first thing the next morning. And now, I had to do the same. So I did.

For someone who loved the ridiculous Ali Zafar-starrer Tere Bin Laden, which had released just months prior, this cleverly crafted British mockumentary felt like its sublimely absurd companion piece. Four doltish Muslim men in the UK with jihadist dreams are led by Ahmed's Omar, a security guard, family man and the most intellectually capable of the cell, which isn't saying much. Omar had to be funny, human and petrifying all at once, but without tipping into caricature. Ahmed, only 28 at the time, performed this delicate dance with such sincerity that it became an unlikely vehicle for launching his international career as an actor who could make even the most reprehensible of men look endearing.