Riz Ahmed on pouring every part of himself into his Sound of Metal role, lessons learned from playing Ruben

To call it the worst night of sleep Riz Ahmed ever had would imply that any sleep was had at all. Still of Sound of Metal “He’s a bit of a savant, like a supercomputer,” Marder said of his Oxford-educated star. “I think that’s a byproduct of a lot of things,” he said, “like feeling a bit of a burden of representation on your shoulders and realising that you might occupy space that many others don’t.” In his essay for The Good Immigrant, Ahmed wrote about the toll of being racially profiled in airports and auditions, and the implicit instructions he felt to leave a part of himself at the door if he wanted to be waved through. “The thing that doesn’t exist in culture is someone like me,” Ahmed said, growing animated. “If we don’t control anything, then maybe every single thing in your life is a gift,” Ahmed said.