‘Bait’ Stars Riz Ahmed and Guz Khan on Finding Humor in Existential Crises

In Prime Video’s Bait, Riz Ahmed plays Shah Latif, a struggling actor who finds himself at the center of media attention for potentially being the next James Bond.

Shah, who merely auditioned for the role – and blew it — now has to deal with the media storm that follows: pressure from his Pakistani Muslim family to make them proud, pressure from the South Asian community to “represent,” and pressure on himself to make it as an actor after years of the hustle and grind.

Ahmed wrote and stars in the six-episode series, drawing from his own experiences in the film and television industry. From the trailer and sneak peek of the series, it seemed to be introduced as a comedy-drama, especially with the supporting cast including comedian Guz Khan, but it turned out to be a very dark, psychological black comedy. Shah goes through an existential crisis that just keeps getting worse and twisted.

“Well, hopefully it is still a comedy,” Ahmed chuckles over Zoom from London. “My mind is a comedy that also contains all these other different flavors because it’s how life feels, right? You’re sometimes going from a serious, traumatic situation to tripping up on the street, then you’re in a slapstick comedy.”

As a fan of all these different genres, the Academy Award-winning actor wanted to mix them into the series, as reflected in the show’s title. Bait means different things in different languages. In Arabic, it means home. In Urdu, it means loyalty. In the online world, it means trolling. For British people, “bait” is slang for an attention seeker, and for spies, it’s used as a trap.

Khan, who shares a hilarious history with Ahmed, was impressed with the scripts he was given. But he knew before the scripts that he wanted to be part of it because he trusted Ahmed’s vision. He recalled getting the call about being on the show and playing Shah’s cousin, Zulfi, who is struggling to start a business despite his troubled past. Khan saw this story and knew it would “be art.”

Khan explains, “In my mind, we just have to ensure, if we take 20-30% of the kind of laughter and humor that we have in our private lives into the show, you’re going to have a comedy. [Those elements of mixing genres up] are synonymous with him and the way he creates his art. Essentially, you can be laughing one minute and have a gut punch the next second. I’m just glad he found a way to mix those two worlds. We definitely had fun, bro. We were laughing.”

In a perfect world, the race or gender of an iconic character like James Bond shouldn’t matter, but we don’t live in that world. The show touches on the reality of this world that cannot accept the idea of not just a Pakistani Bond, but one who is Muslim, and has Shah deal with the physical and mental repercussions of that, as well as how much that would mean to the community that he automatically represents. He must deal with the unrealistic expectations that are placed on him by both them and his family.

Ahmed says writing and performing the series was a form of therapy. He jokes, “I should have probably just done the therapy [instead of making] a TV show.”

If anyone knows about the pressures of breaking barriers for his community, it’s Ahmed. He became the first Muslim and South Asian actor to win a leading acting Emmy Award (for 2017’s The Night Of) and the first Muslim to be nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actor for the 2020 film, The Sound of Metal. He later won an Academy Award for Best Live Action Short Film in 2022 for co-writing and starring in The Long Goodbye. He mentioned in his 2018 New York Times profile that he did not want to be pigeonholed into roles, expressing interest in playing James Bond, “if for no other reason than the sense of arrival such a casting would represent.”

He’s thought about this for a long time, which eventually became a show. He emphasizes that if there is one thing that the show is really about, it is home. He reveals, “When you’re chasing your ambition, you sometimes feel like you’re doing it for the people at home. But, in doing so, you’re sometimes losing touch with home. So it’s really asking: how do you chase a dream without losing your way, who you are, or touch? Is that even possible?”

Ahmed is a prime example of finding success without losing your way, but even he says he finds Shah relatable. He admits there’s a lot of him in the character, and there’s a lot of Shah in everyone.

“I think everyone can relate to that core feeling of the show, which is that sometimes life feels like one big audition,” Ahmed shares. “That’s really the feeling of this character and of their journey. We can all relate to social media, job interviews, or talking to strangers. Sometimes we’re performing a version of ourselves as far from who we really are. It’s like we’re performing, auditioning, and hoping to be seen as worthy enough the whole time.”

Khan finds the story very relatable. His own comedy often includes social commentary on the issues he’s dealt with growing up in a British Pakistani Muslim household, which he often questions how he’s representing his people.

“There are elements in both of our lives where Zulfi is this voice in my head, to make sure you don’t forget where you’re from,” says Khan. “Are you representing your people properly? Are you less worried about what the reviewers and industry are saying? I’m just constantly worried about what my community will think of what I’m doing. It comes with its own pressures. With both these characters, you see how it works.”

As close friends, Khan praises Ahmed for this bold and raw storytelling, “I think it’s very rare that you see a performer in Riz’s position who is so honest about some of the things that are maybe going on his head, in his heart, and the decision-making process [that comes from that].”