Riz Ahmed was all over the place in 2016.
Ahmed even scored a spot on Lin-Manuel MirandasHamilton Mixtape.
But theres more to the actor than just his body of artistic work.
Credit: Karwai Tang/WireImage
(HisThe Night Ofcostar John Turturrohelped with a signal boost.)
Read his thoughts below.
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Lets start with your CrowdRise campaign.
Theyre people just like us who need to survive.
Thats a very fundamental human behavior.
Were all trying to do exactly the same thing, trying to find a better life.
Thats one thing we need to understand.
Theyre people just like us.
Just to backtrack a bit, youve obviously talked about these topics before, throughyour musicand your writing.
I think you only start thinking of those stories aspoliticalif they havent necessarily been heard before.
To me its not political, its just personal.
People start saying thats political becauseyourenot usedto seeing it.
I would also say that any perspective is a political perspective.
Its like,Downton Abbeyis political.
I guess the distinction between art that is seen as political and art that isnt is actually quite paper-thin.
I dont think there really is one.
We tend to label something as political when were not used to seeing it put out there.
I dont get it.
Can you expand on what you mean?Right, well, look, were all in this together.
Were all human beings on Spaceship Earth [laughs] keeping it up there instead of seeing it crash.
In fact, I would argue the opposite.
In this day and age, there are so few forums where global conversations take place between everyone.
One of those areas is music, one of those is the arts, one of those is Hollywood.
But just to play devils advocate, isntHollywooditself a bubble, a left-leaning one?
I think whats really easy to do is generalize about people.
Thats an us-and-them perspective.
One of the foundations behind art and storytelling is that there is no us and them.
Thats why you’ve got the option to relate to stories.
Thats why I likeGirls.
Im not a 20-something white woman from a middle-class background, but I love the show.
Its got great acting.
What does it take to continue telling stories that make it harder to generalize?
Its partly about eliminating the risks that lie behind backing a new voice.
Whodoesntwant to do Barry Jenkins next movie, you know what I mean?
Who can say no to that?
Its a really good time to take calculated risks.
People want something fresh.
