Speaker 1: Pushkin. I just kind of felt the tears on my
Speaker 1: face and I was like, what the hell is going on?
Speaker 1: That's what it's light. When you really communicate with sign language,
Speaker 1: you'll communicate with your whole body. That's a totally different
Speaker 1: kind of communication than, you know, the transaction of just words.
Speaker 1: That's riz Acmanon. He was nominated for an OSCAR for
Speaker 1: his performance in the movie Sound of Metal. In the film,
Speaker 1: he plays a musician who loses his hearing, and he
Speaker 1: says playing the part changed how he moves about in
Speaker 1: this world. In his latest film, Mogul Mowgli, riz plays
Speaker 1: a character based on his own life, and he says
Speaker 1: that role changed how he sees himself. I realized that
Speaker 1: up until his point as an actor, I'd become adept
Speaker 1: to molding masks and wearing them for other people and
Speaker 1: representing other people, and representing for other people a community
Speaker 1: or whatever. And I realized that actually, the next stage
Speaker 1: of growth is about not molding and wearing masks, but
Speaker 1: taking them off. In this episode, what happens when an
Speaker 1: actor takes the mask off and learns how to play himself.
Speaker 1: I'm doctor Maya Schunker, a cognitive scientist who studies how
Speaker 1: and why we change. This is a slight change of plans,
Speaker 1: a show about who we are and who we become
Speaker 1: in the face of a big change. You know. Typically
Speaker 1: a slight change of plans focuses on how people have
Speaker 1: navigated extraordinary change in their personal lives and what that's
Speaker 1: taught them about who they are in their identity and
Speaker 1: how they've shifted perspectives as a result of this big change.
Speaker 1: With your interview in particular, I'm flipping it a bit,
Speaker 1: which is, you're obviously a highly skilled actor, and I
Speaker 1: want to hear how embodying distinct roles in your career
Speaker 1: has changed you in some ways, right, your understanding of
Speaker 1: the world, the world around you, because I imagine that
Speaker 1: sometimes the best way to learn about who we are
Speaker 1: is to see undiscovered parts of ourselves reflected in the
Speaker 1: characters that we play, right, absolutely, That sounds amazing. Well,
Speaker 1: thank you. So to start off it sounded metal. Do
Speaker 1: you mind for listeners who haven't seen the film, can
Speaker 1: you just give a quick synopsis? Yeah? Sure so. Sound
Speaker 1: of Metal is the story of Rubin and Lou. There
Speaker 1: are a couple, they live on the road. They're in
Speaker 1: a band together they live together, so it's kind of
Speaker 1: them against the world in their little cocoon. And you know,
Speaker 1: all of a sudden rubin the drama and the producer
Speaker 1: of this duo loses his hearing. It's a sudden onset
Speaker 1: hearing loss. And what ends up happening is he questions
Speaker 1: his place in the world, his place in the relationship,
Speaker 1: his worth and value in the band, and inevitably it
Speaker 1: triggers some of his issues with addiction, and so his
Speaker 1: entire life is derailed. And yet in that process of
Speaker 1: relinquishing all those roles and identities that he used to
Speaker 1: define himself through, he actually kind of finds himself and
Speaker 1: connects to a part of himself that he didn't know
Speaker 1: was there, that he didn't know he needed to. It's
Speaker 1: beautiful and curious. What did you learn about the deaf
Speaker 1: community by immersing yourself in it for this role? So
Speaker 1: so much? I mean, I thought I just signed up
Speaker 1: to learn American sign language and learn how to play
Speaker 1: the drums, But what I learned was so so much more.
Speaker 1: I feel like the deaf community taught me the meaning
Speaker 1: of the word communication. I feel like the deaf community
Speaker 1: taught me what listening really is Listening isn't something you
Speaker 1: just do with your ears. It's something you do with
Speaker 1: your entire body, with your energy, by holding space for
Speaker 1: someone else with your attention. You know, it's an act
Speaker 1: of love listening, and it's something that is it's an
Speaker 1: all body activity. And similarly with communication, you know, I
Speaker 1: kind of found myself getting far more emotional talking about
Speaker 1: you know, certain topics and sign language than I would
Speaker 1: or if I if I had the mask of words
Speaker 1: to hide behind. I think of Jeremy Stone, my sign instructor,
Speaker 1: who told me that there's this trope in the deaf
Speaker 1: community that hearing people are emotionally repressed because they hide
Speaker 1: behind words, and the deaf community is so much about
Speaker 1: communication and embodied communication rather than physiological listening. That yeah,
Speaker 1: it really kind of worked me up to what those
Speaker 1: words really mean. You give an example of how that
Speaker 1: expressed itself in you. Yes, So one example is, you know,
Speaker 1: Jeremy and I would meet up every day to him
Speaker 1: to teach me sign language for a couple of hours
Speaker 1: every morning for about seven months. And over that period
Speaker 1: of time, you know, you quickly move past you know,
Speaker 1: grammar and vocabulary and your starts becoming each other's therapists
Speaker 1: and each other's kind of best buddies. And I remember
Speaker 1: it was a moment we were just both talking about
Speaker 1: our lives, really our experiences, talking actually about how they
Speaker 1: might have overlapped with the characters of Ruben, that the
Speaker 1: idea of kind of feeling like an outsider, always looking
Speaker 1: for that place that you might belong and finding that
Speaker 1: you didn't, so having to create your own place and belonging.
Speaker 1: And I think we were just talking about high school,
Speaker 1: you know, and our experiences, and it couldn't have been
Speaker 1: more different. You grew up, you know, Afro Latin in Harlem,
Speaker 1: a deaf kid in a hearing school, you know, I
Speaker 1: grew up British Pakistani working class in a push white
Speaker 1: private school in the suburbs. But there was just some
Speaker 1: overlap and we were just talking and HAS found myself
Speaker 1: welling up and I just kind of felt the tears
Speaker 1: on my face and I was like, what the hell
Speaker 1: is going on? And he kind of that's when he
Speaker 1: stopped me and said, that's that's what it's light. When
Speaker 1: you really communicate with sign language, you're communicate with your
Speaker 1: whole body. Your body's reliving the experience and you're transmitting
Speaker 1: that to me with your energy. That's a totally different
Speaker 1: kind of communication than, you know, the transaction of just words. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's so interesting you say this. I know we're both
Speaker 1: We were both at Oxford at various points, and my
Speaker 1: thesis was about multisensory perception and the fact that it
Speaker 1: doesn't make sense to study the senses and isolation. What
Speaker 1: we see can affect what we hear, what we taste
Speaker 1: can affect what we touch, And my research was on
Speaker 1: how our high level expectations of the world infiltrate all
Speaker 1: of our sensory perception. Right, The attitudes and beliefs that
Speaker 1: we bring to the table affect everything, and so we
Speaker 1: sometimes can feel like we're passive recipients of sensory inputs,
Speaker 1: but actually the emotions that we have, the belief systems
Speaker 1: we carry, they inform that sensory perception in critical ways. Right,
Speaker 1: it's a bidirectional route. Absolutely. Well, it's fascinating. So the
Speaker 1: idea that there's no yeah, objective perception. Yeah, that's exactly right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we're kind of yeah, character baggage history, you know, backstory,
Speaker 1: if you will. In acting parlance, that's those are the
Speaker 1: goggles that you're viewing the world through exactly. You know,
Speaker 1: there's this poignant moment when Reuben is at the doctor's
Speaker 1: office because he's just had profound hearing loss, and he
Speaker 1: naively assumes that there has to be a solution to
Speaker 1: his plight, right, he resists any implication that the road
Speaker 1: ahead will be far more complex. I see that. So
Speaker 1: what can we do about it? How do I get
Speaker 1: it back? Well, you have to understand something here. Whether
Speaker 1: or not this is related to your exposure to noise
Speaker 1: or it's an autoimmune issue, doesn't really matter. I understand
Speaker 1: I've got a problem. I'm asking you what I could
Speaker 1: do about it. You know, I think so many of
Speaker 1: us in our lives experience this kind of denial in
Speaker 1: the face of an unwanted change. You know. It's so
Speaker 1: it's such a relatable moment, and so I was curious
Speaker 1: to know whether you've also had that kind of instinct
Speaker 1: at moments in your life where you've been you've either
Speaker 1: been at a crossroads, you've experienced unwanted change, where you're
Speaker 1: just hoping for that simple answer, that's simple fix. I think,
Speaker 1: in smaller ways, almost every day I find myself, you know,
Speaker 1: trying to look for simplistic solutions rather than the complex,
Speaker 1: embracing the complexity of acceptance, you know, and it's it's
Speaker 1: a it's a daily practice, is right, you know. Surrender
Speaker 1: and submission and an acceptance is something that is actually
Speaker 1: comes up in the film a lot Um. You know,
Speaker 1: the idea of the addict looking for a fix, as
Speaker 1: in a hit of drugs, it's also the addict looking
Speaker 1: for a fix a way of you know, um, making
Speaker 1: things feel better. You know. If that's what the hit
Speaker 1: of drugs do, that's what the hit of dopamine does.
Speaker 1: That's what um, the adrenaline does for the workaholic, you know,
Speaker 1: like myself, or that's also um, you know, papering over
Speaker 1: the cracks with some some kind of illusion of solving. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it makes things feel better, but it's but it's
Speaker 1: not engaging with the world as it is. And yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm constantly in that place, I mean saying all the
Speaker 1: things that I struggle with, like terrible surrendering, Oh my gosh.
Speaker 1: I mean one thing I found so much resonance in
Speaker 1: Reuben's story because a quick personal aside, which is I
Speaker 1: was a concert violetist as a kid and a sudden
Speaker 1: acute injury in my hand derailed my musical career, and
Speaker 1: it was so clear to everyone Riz other than me,
Speaker 1: that my journey was over and slowly over the years.
Speaker 1: And I think this touches on some of the themes
Speaker 1: in Sound of Metal and in Mogil Mogley you have
Speaker 1: to figure out who you are outside of that one pursuit.
Speaker 1: It calls into question this very natural question we all
Speaker 1: ask ourselves, which is who are we right? You know,
Speaker 1: in cognitive science there's this term called identity foreclosure, and
Speaker 1: it does refer to the idea that we can feel
Speaker 1: very fixed in our sense of selves, especially early in adolescence,
Speaker 1: and that identity prevents us from exploring other alternatives, other avenues,
Speaker 1: other identities that we can embody. And so, you know,
Speaker 1: I think if you had asked me as a young kid,
Speaker 1: what do you love about the violin? I would have said, well,
Speaker 1: I love how it feels, I love how it sounds.
Speaker 1: Actually what I love of Riz And maybe you can
Speaker 1: relate to this as an actor, as I could get
Speaker 1: onto a stage in front of thousands of strangers and
Speaker 1: within moments I could make them feel something that they
Speaker 1: had never felt before. And that was so intoxicating and
Speaker 1: so powerful that when I realized, well, this is a
Speaker 1: trait of music that made me happy, I might have
Speaker 1: lost the violin, but let me try to find that
Speaker 1: trait elsewhere in other pursuits, right, And so ultimately it
Speaker 1: is human connection that motivated me. And so it led
Speaker 1: me to study cognitive science, right like it led me
Speaker 1: to study the human mind, and it's led me to
Speaker 1: do this podcast. That's a long winded way of saying
Speaker 1: that it's really helped me understand what losing the violin
Speaker 1: at such a formative period of my life taught me,
Speaker 1: as that I had to see my identity as more malleable.
Speaker 1: And it seems like Ruben did too. I love what
Speaker 1: you just said. I can massively relate to that. I
Speaker 1: think that you know, yeah, Sound of Metal and Ruben's
Speaker 1: journey as a character does really interrogate this idea of identity.
Speaker 1: At the start of the movie, he's this, you know,
Speaker 1: a drummer, a producer, a boyfriend who lives this itinerant
Speaker 1: life on the road in a touring band, and at
Speaker 1: the end of the movie he's the opposite of pretty
Speaker 1: much all those things. What's interesting is at the start
Speaker 1: of the movie, you see him in almost a state
Speaker 1: of undress. You know, he's shirtless, but in a way
Speaker 1: he's he's wearing a mask. You know, he's hidden behind
Speaker 1: the fortress of his drums, the cannon. You know that
Speaker 1: he's kind of firing out of the world to keep
Speaker 1: keep the world at bay from getting close to him.
Speaker 1: And he's hiding behind the mask of his blonde hair
Speaker 1: and the mask of his tattoos. And by the end
Speaker 1: of it, he's like all you know, wrapped up in
Speaker 1: Paris and like a coat and everything, but in a
Speaker 1: way he's more naked than ever. He's taken the mask off.
Speaker 1: And it's something I think about a lot, because you know,
Speaker 1: the malluability of identity is you know, sometimes becomes very
Speaker 1: apparent in these moments of crises. And I can very
Speaker 1: much relate to the experience you're talking about, and it's
Speaker 1: partly what drew me towards both Sound and Metal and
Speaker 1: Mogul Mowgli is going through a much smaller, but you know,
Speaker 1: similar experience to what those characters go through. Where I
Speaker 1: kind of found myself kind of almost you know, in
Speaker 1: a kind of state of physical you know, breakdown, just
Speaker 1: total exhaustion. My body just was just would not, you know,
Speaker 1: allow me to function at the pace I was anymore.
Speaker 1: My workaholism had kind of run its course and landed
Speaker 1: me at this crossroads where I wondered whether I could
Speaker 1: continue doing what I'm doing, not just physically but also emotionally.
Speaker 1: And what I learned in that experience, which is, yeah,
Speaker 1: the malleability of our identity, you know. And at some
Speaker 1: point you realize the work won't love you back. And
Speaker 1: at some point you realize, even if the work is
Speaker 1: a tool to get people to love you, that's never
Speaker 1: going to be enough. It's about, you know, self love,
Speaker 1: and what does that mean? Accepting yourself? You know, the
Speaker 1: person you know better than anyone, all the dirt, under
Speaker 1: the rug, the warts and all, you know, the stuff
Speaker 1: that you don't anyone. You know that you've got to
Speaker 1: love that person, need to accept that person. So hard
Speaker 1: for so many of us, and particularly when you realize
Speaker 1: as performers, many of us, rather than look inwards, we're
Speaker 1: looking out to the audience. We're looking for that round
Speaker 1: of applause, you know, we're looking to have roses thrown
Speaker 1: at our feet as we bow because we've got that
Speaker 1: deficit of self love internally, and so I don't know
Speaker 1: that was having performance taken away from me. Having the
Speaker 1: possibility of that external you know, fountain of validation taken
Speaker 1: away from me forced me to look at that internal deficit,
Speaker 1: forced me to try and start exploring the story of
Speaker 1: self love. Look, I love what you say about this
Speaker 1: cloak we wear because I also another moment that really
Speaker 1: resonated with me and sounded metal is Rubin becomes absolutely
Speaker 1: fixated on getting cochlear implants as the plot develops, right,
Speaker 1: thinking that's going to be the thing that solves my problems,
Speaker 1: that's going to be the thing that solves my angst
Speaker 1: and my anxiety. But it doesn't at all provide the
Speaker 1: relief that he had hoped for. But again, in these
Speaker 1: uncertain times, we just cling to the few things we
Speaker 1: feel are in our control, right, and we try to
Speaker 1: tie our future happiness to just those things. But you know,
Speaker 1: of course the story is so much more complicated. Yeah,
Speaker 1: what do you feel you found in that process of
Speaker 1: letting go of control, in that experience with the violin
Speaker 1: or in other life experiences, like what's the kind of shift,
Speaker 1: the kind of attitudinal shift or that's taken place for you,
Speaker 1: because I mean, you know, I can share my own
Speaker 1: experience as well, but I'm interested to hear from you
Speaker 1: what has come up when you try to go down
Speaker 1: that road of acceptance. Yeah, it's and I definitely want
Speaker 1: to hear your thoughts on this. I think one lesson
Speaker 1: is a sobering one, which is, as humans, I think
Speaker 1: we can feel entitled to exactly what I was going
Speaker 1: to say, Yeah, gratitude rightsolutely, so you start off, especially
Speaker 1: when you're younger, though, I mean, honestly, this has followed
Speaker 1: me throughout life. You feel, look if I put in,
Speaker 1: if my inputs are there, right, if I try really hard,
Speaker 1: if I work really hard, if I crush every day,
Speaker 1: like certainly it's an input output model, this life thing.
Speaker 1: And then shit hits the fan over and over again
Speaker 1: at various points in your life, and you realize control
Speaker 1: is truly an illusion, and that bad things befall great
Speaker 1: people all the time, and there's no in my mind sally,
Speaker 1: you know, I don't believe things happen for a reason.
Speaker 1: I just believe life is actually the randomness we see
Speaker 1: around us. And that's both a sad realization to have,
Speaker 1: but it also is in my mind a more accurate
Speaker 1: one to operate under, and to me that brings me
Speaker 1: some solace. Like when a bad thing happens, I don't
Speaker 1: feel it was willed by anyone or anything. I just
Speaker 1: think it is in that in the realm of randomness
Speaker 1: that happens in our lives, that's so interesting. So it's
Speaker 1: it's kind of like it's basically I'm not taking it personally.
Speaker 1: It sounds like you're saying that for you, there's enough
Speaker 1: peace in in depersonalizing the universe that you don't then
Speaker 1: need to take an extra step, because I guess there's
Speaker 1: two ways, Like I guess step one is like bad
Speaker 1: things happen sometimes I'm taking them personally, and good things
Speaker 1: happen sometimes I'm taking them personally. I'm special in the
Speaker 1: best and worst way. And then you can go one
Speaker 1: of two ways. I guess the other one one of
Speaker 1: them is what you're saying, which is actually it's not
Speaker 1: personal and you're not special. It just is, which I love.
Speaker 1: But I guess there's also another route, which has been interesting,
Speaker 1: which is good things and bad things happen for some
Speaker 1: kind of reason or that there or that there's some
Speaker 1: kind of lesson in there. Even if there isn't a lesson,
Speaker 1: even if they haven't happened for a reason, we can
Speaker 1: metabolize them into something that we can come out the
Speaker 1: other side stronger. We can. So there is some kind
Speaker 1: of spiritual board game that we're all playing that you
Speaker 1: can find a gift inside every challenge. And I kind
Speaker 1: of lead in that direction, not saying that your approach
Speaker 1: you might not. I'm mutually exclusive, but I think they're compatible.
Speaker 1: Is I think the only change in word I would
Speaker 1: use is rather than seeing it as a as a
Speaker 1: spiritual journey or spiritual outcome, I just see it as
Speaker 1: a cognitive one, which is I think as humans we
Speaker 1: are natural born storytellers, and we will try and construct
Speaker 1: narratives out of the randomness that happens to us, if
Speaker 1: only to justify why things have happened to us. Right,
Speaker 1: It's effortless for us to search for silver linings, for example,
Speaker 1: after a tragedy, because it just feels like we must
Speaker 1: make sense of randomness. And so I find that even
Speaker 1: though again I don't think the universe had a reason
Speaker 1: behind it, that like this thing was meant to happen,
Speaker 1: I'm the same as you. I absolutely am looking for
Speaker 1: a lesson to be learned, a way to be stronger,
Speaker 1: something that I might pull from the experience that I
Speaker 1: might not have been able to pull from another experience.
Speaker 1: I entered the same psychology as you. I think we're
Speaker 1: just calling it slightly different things. I love it, and
Speaker 1: I actually think that putting trauma, putting good luck, putting
Speaker 1: life like, shaping it into story is it's profoundly healing.
Speaker 1: I think it actually strengthens us. It strengthens our connections
Speaker 1: to each other and to ourselves. It's not just a
Speaker 1: kind of opium, yeah, that we kind of, you know,
Speaker 1: indulge ourselves with. I think it's it's a core part
Speaker 1: of the equipment we've been given on this planet. To
Speaker 1: like it, be at our best, connect with others and
Speaker 1: connect to ourselves. We'll be right back with a slight
Speaker 1: change of plans. Riz Ahmed's most recent film is called
Speaker 1: Mogul Mowgli, which he co wrote with director Bassam Tarik.
Speaker 1: It's the story of a British Pakistani rapper named Zed
Speaker 1: who's just reaching the height of his career when he's
Speaker 1: diagnosed with an autoimmune condition and winds up in the hospital.
Speaker 1: It's a story about family, about where we come from
Speaker 1: and the meaning of home. Themes that Riz says are
Speaker 1: pulled from his real life. So it's a deeply kind
Speaker 1: of personal film. Bassama and I realized, you know, as
Speaker 1: we became friends who were thinking about what we'd like
Speaker 1: to make together, is the one role I never get
Speaker 1: to play as someone like myself, The one story he
Speaker 1: never gets to tell is his story. I realized that
Speaker 1: up until his point as an actor, I've been kind
Speaker 1: of I'd become adept to molding masks and wearing them
Speaker 1: for the people and representing other people, and representing for
Speaker 1: other people a community would And I realized that actually
Speaker 1: the next stage of growth is about not molding and
Speaker 1: wearing masks, but taking them off. Not representing for others
Speaker 1: or representing others, just presenting yourself. And I've always been
Speaker 1: driven by this idea, this mission of trying to stretch culture,
Speaker 1: and I realize, actually can tauting yourself to fit into
Speaker 1: other people's ready made molds maybe doesn't stretch culture as
Speaker 1: much as contributing a new mold, you know, bringing all
Speaker 1: of yourself to the table. So often, you know, particularly
Speaker 1: those of us have identities. We always taught to leave
Speaker 1: part of ourselves at the door, you know, And that's
Speaker 1: an amazing skill. You can build an acting career off
Speaker 1: of it, you know, from a young age, I'm kind
Speaker 1: of wearing shield of argems and speaking dut home. Then
Speaker 1: I'm you know, dressed in a suit and tie named
Speaker 1: after kind of India's colonial British rulers private school, and
Speaker 1: then I'm skipping class to hang out with my boys,
Speaker 1: you know, on the corner. And that's a totally different
Speaker 1: hybrid culture as well. So I'm changing accents, changing costumes,
Speaker 1: playing these different characters. Being unable to bring all of
Speaker 1: myself to any of these environments means I'm acting. And
Speaker 1: you know that's great. That's a skill, but it can
Speaker 1: rob you of a core, and it can allow you
Speaker 1: to internalize this idea that there's something wrong with you.
Speaker 1: It can really feed this lack of self love that again,
Speaker 1: in turn drives your need for validation and performance and
Speaker 1: wearing masks for other people's approval and to fit in.
Speaker 1: And so this film was very much about both me
Speaker 1: and Z trying to accept ourselves without a role or
Speaker 1: a mask to hide behind. Yeah, I mean, it can
Speaker 1: be so scary to look in the mirror so critically
Speaker 1: and so deeply, sometimes just for fear of what we
Speaker 1: might find. Did you face that? I mean, we're how
Speaker 1: did you overcome any anxieties associated with writing something and
Speaker 1: acting something that was so deeply personal? You know, honestly,
Speaker 1: this was very scary film to make, and I was
Speaker 1: kind of secretly hoping that no one would see it.
Speaker 1: So the fact that people are seeing and liking it
Speaker 1: is both lovely but terrifying. But also I'd say the
Speaker 1: fear of what I might find, or the fear of
Speaker 1: being judged, was outweighed by desperate need. I had to
Speaker 1: try and make sense of some of this, to try
Speaker 1: and metabolize my own experience. The catharsis that that I
Speaker 1: knew might be possible. If I was able to shape
Speaker 1: all these disparate strands of my identity and all these
Speaker 1: weird contradictions of my experience into story, then it could
Speaker 1: cohere as a story. Then it would help it to
Speaker 1: cohere for me internally, you know, in my life. Was
Speaker 1: there something specific that writing Z taught you about yourself?
Speaker 1: It was interesting because with sound a metal, you know,
Speaker 1: the script was written it was a master piece by
Speaker 1: Darius Smyder. So I can look at it and step
Speaker 1: back from it, and as you said, start at this
Speaker 1: starting point of sitting outside of it, thinking, oh, what
Speaker 1: is Ruben learning? What is this journey? What is his arc?
Speaker 1: And you know, it's interesting because when I was taking
Speaker 1: on the character of Ruben, I thought, Okay, well, this
Speaker 1: guy's nothing like me, you know, And then you start
Speaker 1: playing any character and this is a journey you always
Speaker 1: go on with every character, and hopefully the journey the
Speaker 1: audience goes on with that character as well. You start
Speaker 1: off going all right, who's this Guy's nothing like me?
Speaker 1: And by the end of it, you're like, I'm exactly
Speaker 1: this person. And that's because you know, I mean, my
Speaker 1: belief is that the differences that seemingly separate us are
Speaker 1: an illusion. Deep down, we are we all share the
Speaker 1: same emotional core. We have different experiences, belief thoughts, but
Speaker 1: we all feel the same things. And that's kind of
Speaker 1: where we are in that super feeling that we all ship.
Speaker 1: But I was like, I'm not an addict. Whatever this
Speaker 1: is going to be research, I'll go to my first
Speaker 1: kind of addiction recovery meeting and I'm like, just I
Speaker 1: feel like, did someone read my diary? Like what this
Speaker 1: is all about me? I mean, I, you know, I
Speaker 1: haven't if it's from substance abuse in that way, but
Speaker 1: it's like I don't know, just that the patterns, the behaviors,
Speaker 1: the attitude, the entitlement, that the tragedy of uniqueness, you know,
Speaker 1: all of this kind of stuff with Mogul Mowgli. In
Speaker 1: a way, even though the character, you know, it's starting point,
Speaker 1: the seed of that character is me. It takes flight
Speaker 1: in its own way, and Z becomes his own person.
Speaker 1: Even though it's it's you know, I recognize it as
Speaker 1: a starting point. I don't have that separation. I'm not
Speaker 1: able to step back and look at it and all right,
Speaker 1: what's the arc? What's the lesson? You know, Bizarma and
Speaker 1: I were making this film. You know, it's even hard
Speaker 1: for us now to depress about it, and all the
Speaker 1: way through making it. If you asked us, really, what's
Speaker 1: the film about? Really what does Z learn? We'd find
Speaker 1: it hard to articulate it. We're so close to it
Speaker 1: that it's hard to kind of articulate. But perhaps that's
Speaker 1: why in a way, it's kind of give me one
Speaker 1: of my profound lessons because it's it's it hasn't been
Speaker 1: an intellectual one, It's been an emotional one. And I
Speaker 1: think it is something to do with self acceptance. I think,
Speaker 1: you know, Zed learning to love himself or accept himself,
Speaker 1: if not love himself outside of a you know, a
Speaker 1: crowd of screaming fans telling him he has worth, or
Speaker 1: outside of his dad telling him that he you know,
Speaker 1: isn't ashamed of him, or you know, any of that stuff.
Speaker 1: I think allowed me to also kind of go on
Speaker 1: this journey and like, well, is are we enough? Am
Speaker 1: I enough? Is Risen enough? Riz when he's not playing
Speaker 1: a character Rism when he's not being interviewed Riz, when
Speaker 1: he's not you know, dressed up in nice clothes and
Speaker 1: stood in a red carpet, It's like, are we enough?
Speaker 1: And I think what Bissam and I I think hoped
Speaker 1: to challenge ourselves to to to believe in making this film,
Speaker 1: is that we are enough, you know, particularly as minorities
Speaker 1: or outside as you internalize the idea that you're not,
Speaker 1: but we are, We're enough. And I feel like, yeah,
Speaker 1: in a way, it brings it back to that mantra
Speaker 1: and addiction recovery. I am enough, I have enough, I
Speaker 1: do enough, and I feel like something in going on
Speaker 1: this journey with the character Z allowed me to start
Speaker 1: believing that, you know, we are enough. Yeah, it's interesting,
Speaker 1: you know, Z, the main character receives an autoimmune diagnosis,
Speaker 1: which ends his rapping career. No. I don't want to
Speaker 1: alarm you, misterron War, but from the scams we've done,
Speaker 1: your muscles seem to be weakening. So what is that, like, say,
Speaker 1: think stroke. It could be a number of things. We
Speaker 1: need to run some more tests to determine what course
Speaker 1: of action is best. Okay, so I can stop buying
Speaker 1: a couple of weeks, get those done. I got to
Speaker 1: all that starts in less than a week. Let's just
Speaker 1: try a couple of things, shall we. And you've spoken
Speaker 1: about how this is a metaphor for his own struggle
Speaker 1: navigating his warring identities, right, this idea that you know,
Speaker 1: your body can't even recognize itself, so it's attacking itself.
Speaker 1: And can you just say a little bit more about
Speaker 1: this and how it might have in some way reflected
Speaker 1: your own experience straddling two cultures. Yeah, what's interesting because
Speaker 1: people who live in diaspora who live in places are
Speaker 1: different to where their ancestors have lived for many generations
Speaker 1: have a much higher incidence of autoimmune conditions than the
Speaker 1: general population. And Psalma and I when we were thinking
Speaker 1: about how do we dramatize tangibly, you know, Z's lack
Speaker 1: of self love or his identity crisis, or the way
Speaker 1: he keeps pushing away the embrace of his culture, his
Speaker 1: inheritance and where he's from. How can he wrestle him
Speaker 1: to the floor. We came up this idea, this autoimmunity
Speaker 1: and this inherited condition, and as we started researching it,
Speaker 1: there's kind of you know three I'd say, you know,
Speaker 1: there were three kind of theories that we found interesting,
Speaker 1: of varying degrees of you know, signed if research or
Speaker 1: data to back them up, but you know, artistically we
Speaker 1: found and fascinating. One is I think called minority stress theory.
Speaker 1: Was this idea that if you're an ethnic minority, you're
Speaker 1: implicitly and explicitly told you're not welcome, so you feel threatened.
Speaker 1: Your immune system is in a state of hyper vigilance,
Speaker 1: so it's an overdrive. It can't switch off. There's another
Speaker 1: theory which is that just that you know about climate
Speaker 1: and diet. And this third theory I came across this
Speaker 1: idea that you know, it's it's an identity crisis played
Speaker 1: out on a molecular level. The body doesn't recognize itself,
Speaker 1: so it's rejecting itself. It's almost a lack of self love.
Speaker 1: It's internalizing this sense of being an outsider until it
Speaker 1: manifests a kind of self hate. And so we thought
Speaker 1: that that was a very apt metaphor, but also something
Speaker 1: that you know, I don't know true to experience of
Speaker 1: a lot of people who've you know, or outsiders racially
Speaker 1: or otherwise. Yeah, I so resonate with that. You've taken
Speaker 1: on these really ambitious, heavy roles and I can't imagine
Speaker 1: it's all peaches and cream where you you know, you're
Speaker 1: like immediately enlightened and you see all these insights, right,
Speaker 1: I imagine it's a it's a dirty, challenging, potentially well
Speaker 1: being harming exercise along the way, And for many people
Speaker 1: who are navigating a change, they have to do that
Speaker 1: hard work right along the way, and it's so uncomfortable.
Speaker 1: It's so challenging to put in that effort to either
Speaker 1: figure oneself out or to navigate a hard change. And
Speaker 1: I'm just wondering what advice you'd have for listeners who are,
Speaker 1: you know, not acting these roles, but are in a
Speaker 1: similar kind of challenging circumstance. I keep thinking of this
Speaker 1: real poem, this idea, this is line in it? Does
Speaker 1: it go to the limits of your longing? It's a
Speaker 1: beautiful poem, and in it there is this line and
Speaker 1: it just says, just keep going. No feeling is final,
Speaker 1: and I just love it. I just think, yeah, I think,
Speaker 1: so we can do, right, we keep going till we can't.
Speaker 1: But when we can't go any further, just know that
Speaker 1: there'll be people who that that keep going. You know,
Speaker 1: Dodd and their journey on was only been made possible
Speaker 1: by you know, the footsteps you put down. So I
Speaker 1: don't know, I just feel like I don't know. I
Speaker 1: don't have any answers. I don't know if we ever
Speaker 1: get to any but we just keep going, you know,
Speaker 1: we just keep going. I'm assuming you've you've made this movie.
Speaker 1: It's out that it's probably just the first chapter. Is
Speaker 1: that how you see it? So what you're saying is
Speaker 1: seem cool. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. I've just commissioned.
Speaker 1: I have no budget, but you know your license. Let's
Speaker 1: do it. Hey, thanks for listening. Join me next week
Speaker 1: when I talk to Annie Duke, an internationally renowned poker
Speaker 1: champion who's won more than four million dollars. Annie's also
Speaker 1: an expert on the science of quitting, something she thinks
Speaker 1: we should do a lot more of. You know, one
Speaker 1: of the reasons I think I'm so fascinated with quitting
Speaker 1: is because I was a poker player, and what distinguishes
Speaker 1: great poker players from everybody else is that is mainly quitting.
Speaker 1: They quit a lot more so, they're just very good
Speaker 1: at cutting their losses. A Slight Change of Plans is created,
Speaker 1: written an executive produced by me Maya Schunker. The best
Speaker 1: part of creating this show is getting to collaborate with
Speaker 1: my formidable Slight Change family. This includes Tyler Green, our
Speaker 1: senior producer, Jen Guera, our senior editor, Ben Holiday, our
Speaker 1: sound engineer, Emily Rostek our associate producer, and Neil Lavelle,
Speaker 1: our executive producer. Louise Scara wrote our delightful theme song,
Speaker 1: and Ginger Smith helped arrange the vocals. A Slight Change
Speaker 1: of Plans is a production of Pushkin Industries, so big
Speaker 1: thanks to everyone there, as well as Razza Hellem for
Speaker 1: his insights on this interview, and of course a very
Speaker 1: special thanks to Jimmy Lee. You can follow a Slight
Speaker 1: Change of Plans on Instagram at doctor Maya Schunker and
Speaker 1: please remember to subscribe, share and rate the show to
Speaker 1: help get the word out. See you next week.