US EditionRiz Ahmed talks turning Bait's chilling hate crime scene into the surreal: 'It's about internalised racism and prejudice'
The six-episode British series uses a surreal narrative device to examine internalised racism and identity through a struggling actor's response to a hate crime, streaming on Amazon Prime Video.
- On March 25, 2026, Prime Video released Bait, a comedy series created by and starring Riz Ahmed. The show follows London-based actor Shah Latif as he faces an existential crisis after auditioning for the role of the next James Bond.
- Ahmed spent 12 years developing the series, drawing from his own experiences starting around 2014. He sought to dramatize the "stressful" gap between his public persona and his actual, often chaotic private self.
- Voiced by Sir Patrick Stewart, a pig's head embodies Shah's harsh inner critic throughout the series. Ahmed cast real-life friend Guz Khan as Zulfi, believing only Khan could authentically represent a character fully at ease with himself.
- After paparazzi photos of the audition spread, Shah encounters a media storm fueled by online Islamophobia and racism. The spectacle escalates when a hate crime occurs: a pig's head is thrown through his parents' window.
- The series explores the fraught relationship between politics and Brown identity in a contemporary global context. Ahmed aims to create "category killers," blending comedy and family drama to examine what he calls "a playground of shame.
11 Articles
11 Articles
What would you do to be the next James Bond? Riz Ahmed’s Bait dives deep
Over the last decade or so, Riz Ahmed has become an actor who was reason enough to give a film or a television series a look. Also a rapper, Ahmed won the Emmy Award for outstanding lead actor in a limited series or movie for his work in the excellent 2016 HBO miniseries The Night Of and earned an Academy Award nomination for best actor for the engrossing 2019 drama Sound of Metal. Now comes Bait, a solid half-hour comedy series in which he not …
The Independent
The Independent (US)Riz Ahmed’s hilarious Bond comedy Bait shows why playing 007 can be poisoned chalice
In ‘Bait’, Oscar winner Ahmed plays a British Asian actor whose life is upended when he auditions to play James Bond. Beyond the spy franchise hook, the show has sharp gags and a deeper point to make, writes Kevin E G Perry
Riz Ahmed talks turning Bait's chilling hate crime scene into the surreal: 'It's about internalised racism and prejudice'
**Warning: This article contains spoilers for Bait.**As the world starts closing in on Shah Latif (Riz Ahmed) in Prime Video's Bait, things start to go from ordinary to slightly surreal as the struggling actor has to deal with being thrown into the spotlight.Having engineered a studio exit to be captured by paparazzi so the James Bond rumour mill could involve him, Shah is taken aback as he realises that not everyone is pleased at the prospect o…
Why yes, we'll take Riz Ahmed's 'Bait' - TPR: The Public's Radio
In the whimsical Prime Video comedy series Bait, the great Riz Ahmed plays Shah, an actor in the middle of a career downturn who lands an audition to be the next James Bond. But when this leaks to the public, the social media reactions to the possibility of a brown 007 are unhinged. And one particularly disturbing response shakes Shah’s confidence and sends his personal life into a tailspin. The post Why yes, we’ll take Riz Ahmed’s ‘Bait’ appear…
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