Speaker 1: Have long, deep history with this critical voice and this shame,
Speaker 1: and I really think it can kill you.
Speaker 2: Man. What part of you still feels like it doesn't belong.
Speaker 1: Different parts of me in every place that I go to.
Speaker 1: If you felt totally comfortable everywhere you went, and you're
Speaker 1: probably not in.
Speaker 2: The right place. What is Riz Ahmed's dream?
Speaker 1: External markers of achievement, the award, the round of applause,
Speaker 1: They don't nourish you on a soul level. And the
Speaker 1: thing that I'm seeking now is a sense of flow
Speaker 1: at that moment when you forget yourself.
Speaker 2: Hey, everyone, welcome back to on purpose, the place you
Speaker 2: come to become the happier, healthier and more healed. Today's
Speaker 2: guest to someone I've been wanting to have in this
Speaker 2: seat for god knows how many years. I'm joined by
Speaker 2: the one the only, Riz Armored Academy Award winning actor, writer,
Speaker 2: producer and artist, known for Sound of Metal, Rogue One,
Speaker 2: and The Night of and for bringing deeply human stories
Speaker 2: to life. Riz is currently starring in Bait. If you
Speaker 2: haven't seen it, make sure you do. A series exploring
Speaker 2: identity and the tension between who we are and how
Speaker 2: we're seen. His reimagined film Hamlet and Digger, his new
Speaker 2: film coming later this year. Please welcome to On Purpose,
Speaker 2: Riz Ahmed Riz. Honestly, whether it was Post nine to
Speaker 2: eleven Blues, whether it was Four Lions, We've been with
Speaker 2: you from the start. I've been cheering so much. I
Speaker 2: am a huge fan of how you put yourself out there,
Speaker 2: the conversations you have, your multidisciplinary art form, and honestly,
Speaker 2: I've been waiting for this moment. I feel like, for
Speaker 2: like god, at least seven years since I launched the show.
Speaker 1: Likewise, Jay, because I'm watching you and I've just been
Speaker 1: rooting for you from the beginning. And you know, we
Speaker 1: were just saying this before the camera started rolling. We
Speaker 1: have so many people in common in the work world
Speaker 1: but also in the personal world because we grew up
Speaker 1: not too far away from each other in kind of
Speaker 1: overlapping worlds as well. So seeing you doing your thing,
Speaker 1: blazing a trail is just super inspiring. So Likewise, man,
Speaker 1: I've been itching to get in here and yeah, talk
Speaker 1: to you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely absolutely, I was thinking about it, and I
Speaker 2: want to vouch for this because I like doing this
Speaker 2: when I've got someone on the show and I've got
Speaker 2: a memory that stands out to me, and it was
Speaker 2: probably around five years ago. I think it was you'd
Speaker 2: been nominated for an Oscar. We had this South Asian
Speaker 2: Oscars evening in La and you were at the party.
Speaker 2: It was probably the only time I've actually been in
Speaker 2: the room with you. It was me, you and we
Speaker 2: were talking to Bella Bella Bajari, who's chief content officer Netflix,
Speaker 2: dear friend, and you said to Bella you were like,
Speaker 2: give this guy a show man, Like you were like
Speaker 2: you were vouching for me even back then, like give
Speaker 2: him a show. Beller like, what are you doing? And
Speaker 2: I was like this is I was like, this is
Speaker 2: so nice. I'll take it. Like you're a man at
Speaker 2: the moment, you're nominated for the Oscar and you're trying
Speaker 2: to get me a show and now we've got three
Speaker 2: shows at Netflix. Amazing. You know, AMAZ feel like you
Speaker 2: planted a very important say I want to give your
Speaker 2: flowers and give you treadit for that man.
Speaker 1: For me, the reason I was rooting for you was
Speaker 1: because of not just what you have to say, because
Speaker 1: of course what you say is is so rooted in
Speaker 1: this ancient tradition.
Speaker 2: It's how you say it.
Speaker 1: It's how approachable it is, It's how human it feels,
Speaker 1: it's how relatable it felt, just even selfishly on the
Speaker 1: personal level, when I hear you speak, when I see
Speaker 1: the way that you're relating to people or making these
Speaker 1: things that can sometimes feel very abstract or kind of
Speaker 1: elusive ideas, esoteric ideas, and bring them into the every day,
Speaker 1: bring them into our daily lives.
Speaker 2: It makes me feel less stupid, do you know what
Speaker 2: I mean?
Speaker 1: It makes me like okay, yeah, okay, yeah, all right,
Speaker 1: I can I understand that. I get to grips with that.
Speaker 1: And I'm certainly one of those people who for a
Speaker 1: long time thought, oh, what's this meditation stuff?
Speaker 2: What is this?
Speaker 1: This is kind of a bit airy fairy, And it
Speaker 1: actually became such a big part of my life for
Speaker 1: many years and changed my life in so many different ways.
Speaker 1: It's really because of people like you making it relatable,
Speaker 1: making it human. So yeah, on a personal level, I
Speaker 1: was like, I need more Jay Shae in my life.
Speaker 2: Kind man, thank you. That means the world. It's an
Speaker 2: incredible moment for you. I feel like You're everywhere in
Speaker 2: a good way. I feel like Bait has just pierced
Speaker 2: through the zeitgeist and the culture. I mean, ninety five
Speaker 2: percent on rotten tomatoes. Unbelievable. That is ridiculous to even
Speaker 2: think about you and like to see the kind of
Speaker 2: conversations it started. It's not just oh my god, you
Speaker 2: should watch this show. It's really good. It started conversations
Speaker 2: about identity, about shame, about mental health, about in a critic,
Speaker 2: about guilt, about all these things. And you see it
Speaker 2: where wherever I go on my feed, whether it's TikTok
Speaker 2: or Instagram, either it's you or someone talking about the show.
Speaker 2: How does it feel to put yourself out there in
Speaker 2: such a vulnerable way because this story has so much
Speaker 2: of a correlation with your reality. How does it feel
Speaker 2: to put yourself out there almost not wanting validation, and
Speaker 2: then to be validated for it. It's really interesting, isn't it?
Speaker 1: Because the whole show is about validation seeking and how
Speaker 1: it can lead us down a really dangerous path. Is
Speaker 1: very natural, is very human with social animals to want
Speaker 1: that connection, want that praise, affirmation to be seen. But
Speaker 1: if you are purely dependent on that external validation and
Speaker 1: you're not giving your self that self love, you can
Speaker 1: become completely lost, and that's what the show is about.
Speaker 1: And the show is really inspired by my own journey
Speaker 1: with that. You know, I've been on that journey. I
Speaker 1: continue to go on that journey. I haven't fixed it.
Speaker 1: I haven't solved the equation. It's a constant battle, you know,
Speaker 1: trying to find that self love and not just be
Speaker 1: on a treadmill looking for it from other places. So
Speaker 1: the show is about that and about trying to get
Speaker 1: past validation. So in a weird way, when people are
Speaker 1: validating the show, I'm like, this is a trap.
Speaker 2: You know. It's interesting.
Speaker 1: I was saying something that this is someone the other day,
Speaker 1: which is I've never been great at receiving praise. Just now,
Speaker 1: when you were saying all these nice things about me,
Speaker 1: I was actually saying, okay, way with Jaysh. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: open my heart, try and be present and receive receive
Speaker 1: the good energy. But something in me, and I'm sure
Speaker 1: you've come up against this with all kinds of people.
Speaker 1: I don't know how you deal with it yourself. Even
Speaker 1: something about receiving praise something makes me feel uncomfortable. And
Speaker 1: so I'm trying to find that balance of not being
Speaker 1: desperate and hungry for it. You know, you can't live
Speaker 1: off a diet of this candy, of these dopamine hits.
Speaker 1: So people's pray but also just receive it and avoid it.
Speaker 1: I can sometimes swing between those extremes.
Speaker 2: You know. This on the one hand is.
Speaker 1: Googling yourself late at night, and on the other hand,
Speaker 1: it's like going like, nah, no, there's nothing is rubbish,
Speaker 1: And so I'm just trying to find that healthy middle ground,
Speaker 1: because the show's about that in a way.
Speaker 2: Yeah, No, I find that powerful because I feel like
Speaker 2: it's almost like my friend said this to me the
Speaker 2: other day and I really liked it. It's this idea
Speaker 2: of like too tight too loose, Like sometimes you're holding
Speaker 2: yourself too tightly, like everything matters and everything's important, yes,
Speaker 2: And then sometimes you don't hold yourself tightly at all.
Speaker 2: It's too loose and you're like, oh, nothing matters, No,
Speaker 2: it doesn't matter what anyone else says about me. And
Speaker 2: it's like, if you think about it, you're always trying
Speaker 2: to oscillate between too tight too loose, and you're trying
Speaker 2: to find that perfect balance of like how do I
Speaker 2: hold myself in a way I don't suffocate myself or
Speaker 2: stra but how do I hold myself in a way
Speaker 2: that I don't also just let myself go where nothing
Speaker 2: is important or valuable. And I was thinking about it
Speaker 2: because in the show we get so many of these
Speaker 2: flashbacks into Shah's childhood, his teenagers. I've seen the show.
Speaker 2: I loved it, and I have been talking about it
Speaker 2: with colleagues and friends and people who have all had
Speaker 2: interesting reflections on it, both people from South Asian backgrounds
Speaker 2: and people from completely not. And that's what I love
Speaker 2: about the show is that it starts really fascinating dialogues
Speaker 2: beyond culture and gender and race. But one of the
Speaker 2: things that stood out I wanted to ask you is
Speaker 2: what's a childhood memory that you have that you would
Speaker 2: say defines who you are today.
Speaker 1: When I was about eight years old, me and my
Speaker 1: brother got put up against the wall by a couple
Speaker 1: of skinheads. Right for people outside of the British context,
Speaker 1: they like it was like a racist movement basically. Then
Speaker 1: they put a knife to my brother's throat. I remember
Speaker 1: being eight years old looking up at him. He was
Speaker 1: kind of defending me, and it was just this kind
Speaker 1: of shocking, reallyzation that oh I'm different. I'm different in
Speaker 1: a way that means that I could be in danger
Speaker 1: and feeling other than that way. Maybe more vigilant made
Speaker 1: me more aware of my identity In many ways. It
Speaker 1: set me on a lifelong journey of trying to like
Speaker 1: square the circle of my identity. In some periods of time,
Speaker 1: I've tried to code switch a lot. If I've gone
Speaker 1: to a predominantly why upper class school, which I did
Speaker 1: a code switch in that way, then I'd hang out
Speaker 1: of my neighborhood. I'd code switch another way. And I
Speaker 1: think that journey has defined me. I think that's how
Speaker 1: why I started acting was kind of code switching from
Speaker 1: one social environment to another. It's a kind of performance right,
Speaker 1: And where I'm at now, and really what the show
Speaker 1: Bait is also trying to do and what it's about,
Speaker 1: it's about a search for identity. So I'm trying to
Speaker 1: bring all those different sides of me together, not edit
Speaker 1: and censor myself when I walk into a room. I
Speaker 1: did this monologue for snl UK recently and I was
Speaker 1: working with the writers on it, and it was about
Speaker 1: identity crisis, and I was like, I'm having an identity crisis.
Speaker 1: The uk is everyone's having an idy We're all trying
Speaker 1: to work out who we are. And I said, look,
Speaker 1: that's why I stand like a mix between Stormzy and
Speaker 1: Rishie Sunak and just trying to embrace that, be playful
Speaker 1: about that confusion. I think that moment of realizing my
Speaker 1: difference and navigating identity was a big one. The other
Speaker 1: one's a lot more of a playful memory. Every time
Speaker 1: there was a community gathering at some point, the Aunties
Speaker 1: would be high on Coca Cola and Fanta and they
Speaker 1: would say, bring Gorlu down. Gorlu was my name in
Speaker 1: the community. No Gorlu means round though, yeah, little spherical
Speaker 1: round object. Don't Apparently my brother named me Gorlu. I
Speaker 1: had a round it grown er, don't ask bring Gulu down.
Speaker 1: It's time and I would perform and I would do
Speaker 1: Michael Jackson dancing and I would do like just right
Speaker 1: and it honestly they basically I'd be smashed off coca
Speaker 1: cola as like a six year old, just like just
Speaker 1: freaking out, just throwing my limbs. I just remember these
Speaker 1: rows of Aunties just sat there clapping and just feel
Speaker 1: like this is the best feeling ever. I'm just getting
Speaker 1: to express these quite wild animal movements. I mean, it
Speaker 1: did look nothing like how dancing should look. I'll just
Speaker 1: basically freak out in this really expressive way and be
Speaker 1: a firmed for it.
Speaker 2: Quite strange. But I don't know if anyone else can
Speaker 2: relate to that, if any other kids out there were
Speaker 2: brought down to dance for the anties. But I say
Speaker 2: the mixture of those two things, you know, self expression
Speaker 2: and navigating identity as something that could be a bit dangerous,
Speaker 2: those two elements I think have kind of really forged
Speaker 2: my whole path, and I've been exploring how those two
Speaker 2: things relate to each other my whole life. Yeah, I'm
Speaker 2: fascinated by those two memories because they, like you said,
Speaker 2: ones play for and has certain consequences with what happens
Speaker 2: with that, the validation, the praise, the applause for losing control,
Speaker 2: and then the other one is actually quite to be
Speaker 2: in that threatening place as a young man with your
Speaker 2: brother and feeling the racist implications of having that kind
Speaker 2: of interaction with song. So many people go, I mean,
Speaker 2: sure you experienced a lot. When you said Gorlu, I
Speaker 2: was like, so I was overweight growing up, so I
Speaker 2: was bullied for that. I was bullied for the color
Speaker 2: of my skin because the area I grew up and
Speaker 2: there weren't a lot of people of our color. And
Speaker 2: so I get it, like I hear that, and that
Speaker 2: doesn't make it any more normal or easy or better
Speaker 2: for any of us. It's just like, no, that's what
Speaker 2: you went through. But I can also relate to the
Speaker 2: other side of the Aunties. I could totally relate to
Speaker 2: everything you just said. I'm just like we'd be at
Speaker 2: like an event and the act had pulled out or something,
Speaker 2: and then my mom would be like, all right, you
Speaker 2: got to go on stage and save the day. What
Speaker 2: do you mean? Like, I haven't prepared anything. I'm not
Speaker 2: ready for this, and I'd have to figure it out.
Speaker 2: We're all out ages trying to please Aunties literally literally
Speaker 2: to do what is up with that? And the funny
Speaker 2: thing is where I was saying this too earlier and
Speaker 2: I saved it. But I was like, you know, like
Speaker 2: you you kind of you lived the auntie's dream, like
Speaker 2: you went to a great school. You don't went to
Speaker 2: Oxford and did PP For anyone who doesn't know, that's
Speaker 2: the prime minister's degree, like the prime ministers of England.
Speaker 2: I think pretty much every single one of them did
Speaker 2: ppe at Oxford as a subject, it is the most
Speaker 2: world class degree could possibly do in the whole entire country.
Speaker 2: Then you go, I want to become an actor, and
Speaker 2: then you go be an actor too. I'm like, you
Speaker 2: did it like you did the academic dream you did
Speaker 2: the you did your dream like when you look at
Speaker 2: it from that perspective of hey, wait a minute, I
Speaker 2: actually lived every dream here when you look back and
Speaker 2: go what is my dream now? Or uncovering what is
Speaker 2: riz Armed's dream? Do you have anything that feels close?
Speaker 2: You know?
Speaker 1: It's so interesting hearing you say this, because I don't
Speaker 1: know if you have this j if I sit back
Speaker 1: here and I say, Jay, you've done this thing. You
Speaker 1: brought kind of mindfulness and this Eastern philosophy to like
Speaker 1: the world. You've got the world's number one health podcast,
Speaker 1: all this kind of stuff. You're aware of those things,
Speaker 1: possibly as facts, but your internal experience of it. Does
Speaker 1: it really land like that? Or does it feel like
Speaker 1: a series of mistakes that went right, moments of hubris
Speaker 1: that went wrong, a journey that's constantly unfolding that you're
Speaker 1: not quite in control of. And in many ways like
Speaker 1: you don't stop to like breathe it. But maybe I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm sure you stop to breathe all the time, so
Speaker 1: you stop to kind of, you know, kind of really
Speaker 1: have check out that perspective. But when you're saying these
Speaker 1: things about kind of living the dream or whatever, I
Speaker 1: guess I don't see it like that. I feel very
Speaker 1: grateful for my journey. And maybe the reason why I
Speaker 1: don't see it like that is I realized that all
Speaker 1: these kind of external markers of achievement, they.
Speaker 2: Don't really land. They don't really land in the way
Speaker 2: you think they will. The award, the round of applause,
Speaker 2: these fleeting moments, these moments have kind of these dopamine hits,
Speaker 2: those moments of the little kid dancing in front of
Speaker 2: the aunties, being handed in another cup of coca cola
Speaker 2: in a round of applause, and you know, those moments
Speaker 2: they feel nice, they feel good, but they're very fleeting.
Speaker 2: They don't nourish you on a soul level. Those external things.
Speaker 1: I think what we're searching for as artists, as storytellers,
Speaker 1: as actors, but really any of us is a sense
Speaker 1: of flow.
Speaker 2: You know, at that moment when you forget yourself. It's
Speaker 2: that feeling when you're not literally self conscious, and you
Speaker 2: talk about this so much, right, and this feeling of
Speaker 2: connection to all things and all people, and every now
Speaker 2: and again, in a fleeting moment, whether you're lost in
Speaker 2: a jigsaw puzzle you love, or a video gamee or
Speaker 2: on stage performing or in a conversation playing with your kid,
Speaker 2: you forget yourself.
Speaker 1: And that's the thing I'm chasing. It's trying to live
Speaker 1: in that as much as possible, both in my art
Speaker 1: and in my life. I want to try and just
Speaker 1: find a way of just living as close as possible
Speaker 1: to that pocket, rather than these milestones and these trophies
Speaker 1: and these things of achievement. Of course, we all have
Speaker 1: an ego.
Speaker 2: We need one.
Speaker 1: I'm still setting goals, I'm still setting targets. We're still
Speaker 1: living in this world. But I've realized, in a weird way,
Speaker 1: having achieved some of those things, having ticked some of
Speaker 1: those boxes, it doesn't feed.
Speaker 2: Your soul in the way you think it will. It
Speaker 2: makes so much sense because I think as humans were
Speaker 2: only good at living in the two extremes. So one
Speaker 2: is life is all about goals. It's about the malester,
Speaker 2: and it's about winning and I want to get there.
Speaker 2: And then the other option is, oh, none of that matters.
Speaker 2: I've just got a bee. And really it's all in
Speaker 2: the middle somewhere like you're saying, which is I need
Speaker 2: to have goals and I need to know where I'm going,
Speaker 2: but I know that that's not the thing that's going
Speaker 2: to feed my soul or make me feel full. I've
Speaker 2: been just thinking about this a lot lately, because I
Speaker 2: talk about these things and I practice these things, but
Speaker 2: then you meet someone who does it better than you,
Speaker 2: more naturally, more effortlessly, and you go, you're talking about me.
Speaker 2: J Yeah, yeah, I was talking about you life, Thank you.
Speaker 2: I was doing one of my friends who's like she
Speaker 2: can make like if she saw a beautiful colored flower
Speaker 2: on the side of her own she would stop and
Speaker 2: grab them and feel like someone just gave her a
Speaker 2: million dollars amazing, and it sounds ridiculous to say it,
Speaker 2: but having watched her do that, I'm just like, that's
Speaker 2: what I want like to be, you know, to be
Speaker 2: able to turn that really ordinary, simple moment into feeling
Speaker 2: like it's the most order. And we see this in kids.
Speaker 2: I know you're a dad too. It's like you see
Speaker 2: this in kids when you watch a kid just marvel
Speaker 2: at something and they're lost in a moment. You know,
Speaker 2: there's that classic stereotypical thing of like trying to get
Speaker 2: everyone out of the house, put on your shoes because
Speaker 2: we've got somewhere to be milestone objective, achievement goal, and
Speaker 2: the kid is like playing.
Speaker 1: With the velcrow on the shoes. And it's that. That's
Speaker 1: the thing, That's what it's all about.
Speaker 2: It is this moment.
Speaker 1: What you're saying kind of reminds me of obviously is
Speaker 1: that cliche is not the destination, it's the journey. But
Speaker 1: I think you need to set the destination so that
Speaker 1: you get to experience the journey. And that's what I'm
Speaker 1: talking about. It's like, you can aim to achieve x
Speaker 1: y Z, just know that XYZ isn't going to be
Speaker 1: the juice. The juice is going to be that feeling
Speaker 1: of flow that if you're lucky, you might feel trying
Speaker 1: to get there.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: The love that we've got on Bait was overwhelming for
Speaker 1: me in a way because it was so personal, because
Speaker 1: it was drawn from all my insecurities in Euroses in
Speaker 1: such a personal place, not because I'm trying to do
Speaker 1: something it's all about me, but actually because I think
Speaker 1: those feelings are universal. I started, I was actually saying
Speaker 1: to my wife, It's like, should I be enjoying that more?
Speaker 1: Should it be landing more? And that's when I realized, like,
Speaker 1: it's actually the reward was the process of making it
Speaker 1: was the process of reaching inside to a vulnerable place
Speaker 1: and kind of offering it up. There's that moment of offering,
Speaker 1: is that moment of letting go. There's this sample at
Speaker 1: the start of a j coletrack called the Climb Back.
Speaker 1: The tracks pulled the Climback, and I think it's a
Speaker 1: sample from a very old audio book called The Tower
Speaker 1: of Leadership, and it says, you need to ask yourself,
Speaker 1: why are you doing this work?
Speaker 2: Is it to get or is it to let go? Oh?
Speaker 2: That's it.
Speaker 1: When you're reaching inside to share something and it's an offering.
Speaker 1: That is the reward man, That feeling of lightness, that expansiveness.
Speaker 1: The things you get back from it, they're nice, but
Speaker 1: it's never going to be the juice like that letting
Speaker 1: go was. So I'm trying to making my peace with
Speaker 1: that now.
Speaker 2: That's huge, though, to even be attempting to do that,
Speaker 2: because it's so easy to stay on the hamster wheel.
Speaker 2: It's almost easier to just keep producing, keep building, keep
Speaker 2: putting out, keep doing that thing. You have this great line.
Speaker 2: I think you said it in one of the interviews,
Speaker 2: and it's in the themes Ofbate. It's even in I
Speaker 2: believe it might even be in the show. But you said,
Speaker 2: like life just feels like one big audition, and I
Speaker 2: wanted to ask you about that. I think it's such
Speaker 2: a great line because I think people are exhausted feeling
Speaker 2: like their life just feels like one big audition, big term.
Speaker 2: And we see, obviously your character's Charlotte if like he's
Speaker 2: going for an actual audition, but then his life turns
Speaker 2: into pretending, like everything has to be about that moment
Speaker 2: and he has to be that character in his normal life,
Speaker 2: and I think we do that to ourselves. Is it
Speaker 2: possible to live as if life is not an audition? Yeah,
Speaker 2: that is really the central idea of the show. That's
Speaker 2: why this show is based around an audition. It's not
Speaker 2: really a show about being an actor. It's about this
Speaker 2: We always feel like we are all auditioning. And that's
Speaker 2: because I think of social media to a considerable extent,
Speaker 2: the attention economy that we all exist in, that our
Speaker 2: value is about our visibility, and so we're all constantly
Speaker 2: performing this version of ourselves that we think we should be,
Speaker 2: that we think people want us to be. And that's
Speaker 2: true on your LinkedIn profile, on a zoom call, on
Speaker 2: your social media, just as it is for an act. Right, Like,
Speaker 2: here's the script I have to behave like a more desirable,
Speaker 2: put together, successful version of myself. But actually I can't
Speaker 2: make sense of this script of life and I'm having
Speaker 2: a panic attack. And so how do you switch that off?
Speaker 2: How do you kind of like stop performing. I think
Speaker 2: it's really interesting because you could say, well, you know what,
Speaker 2: it's about being really vulnerable. It's about embracing your messiness.
Speaker 2: You can also get into like performative vulnerability. I think
Speaker 2: so much of it isn't about what you do, it's
Speaker 2: about why you're doing it and how you're doing it.
Speaker 1: And I have to be honest, at least for myself.
Speaker 1: Like I've never gotten to a point where i feel
Speaker 1: like I've cracked this, but I have some days, some
Speaker 1: afternoons where I just feel like it's not about me. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I forgotten myself. I'm in that sense of flow, and ironically,
Speaker 1: that's when things are going the best, you know, when
Speaker 1: I'm not thinking about them in that way.
Speaker 2: But I don't know.
Speaker 1: I mean, how do you kind of find this as
Speaker 1: wellarticularly kind of operating in a world that's about mindfulness
Speaker 1: and meditation and finding your purpose on a spiritual level,
Speaker 1: But of course the medium is often digital and social media,
Speaker 1: and how do you square that circle? Because it must
Speaker 1: be in a way. It's similar as like being an
Speaker 1: actor one hundred percent. You know, you're trying to do
Speaker 1: something spiritual and forgetting yourself, but you're doing it with
Speaker 1: people watching.
Speaker 2: I haven't figured out either. It would be stupid to
Speaker 2: say I have. And I'm grappling with it too. And
Speaker 2: that's why this interview is so exciting to me, because
Speaker 2: the themes in bay are so universal no matter what
Speaker 2: you do, and like you said, whether someone's applying for
Speaker 2: a job on LinkedIn or whether they're just trying to
Speaker 2: make their mom happy or whatever it may be, it's
Speaker 2: it's all in there. And so for me, I started
Speaker 2: to realize that and you'd feel this way that as
Speaker 2: an actor, it's slightly different because with an actor, everyone
Speaker 2: thinks you are your roles so right, Like if someone
Speaker 2: meets Chris Hemsworth, they think he's thought and like they
Speaker 2: think they're getting a picture O man. Yeah, they think
Speaker 2: they get a picture with Thor if you Robert Downey Junior,
Speaker 2: you think you're with Iron Man like that you know
Speaker 2: Tony Sark, Like that's who you're in love with. You're not.
Speaker 2: You don't know who Robert Downey Junior is, same with Rizamed.
Speaker 2: Whereas for you the public and private self, there's an authenticity.
Speaker 2: There's a coherence to it. Yes there is in the
Speaker 2: sense of, yes, I do this in real life and
Speaker 2: I do it online. But I'm also a complete human
Speaker 2: being with lots of other desires and lots of other complexities.
Speaker 2: So like what I try and do as much as
Speaker 2: I can, which helps me more than helps anyone else,
Speaker 2: is like I try not to say anything profound when
Speaker 2: I'm around me because because it's people come over for
Speaker 2: dinner party, they're expecting Jay's going to be dropping some jam.
Speaker 2: I'm like literally the plainest, like, yeah, just a man
Speaker 2: United schools. Yeah exactly. I would literally start talking about football,
Speaker 2: because all I'm trying to do is like I don't
Speaker 2: want to play up to the caricature of what I
Speaker 2: think I've become. It's like a comedian that just thinks
Speaker 2: they have to be funny all the time, so I
Speaker 2: can feel like, oh God, I've just got to be
Speaker 2: everything that comes out of mouth has to be profound
Speaker 2: and not as not only is that not realistic, it's
Speaker 2: not possible. I'm not I'm a normal person. Like everything
Speaker 2: I say is like deep and life changing, and I
Speaker 2: don't even want to be that. And so it's this
Speaker 2: fascinating thing that I'm always dealing with. It makes you
Speaker 2: feel better, Jay, the time we've spent I've you always
Speaker 2: felt to me to be very superficial. Thank you what
Speaker 2: you want to hear? Yeah, but yeah, So I think
Speaker 2: my point is I'm always, in one sense, compensating for
Speaker 2: that by creating moments of breaking the image.
Speaker 1: You know, somebody says something really interesting to me that
Speaker 1: in a way inspired the whole show of bait.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: It was this one thing was this feeling of life
Speaker 1: for all of us feels like an addition. And the
Speaker 1: other thing was the distance between your public and private
Speaker 1: self is the amount of shame that you carry, the
Speaker 1: distance between how you want to be seen or how
Speaker 1: people see you and who you are when no one's
Speaker 1: watching that performance that we are all living in that's
Speaker 1: actually about that's a measurement of shame. And I was like,
Speaker 1: I want to do something in that spot and for me,
Speaker 1: in that space between those two versions of yourself. That
Speaker 1: space really started opening up for me a lot about
Speaker 1: ten years ago when I started to become more known
Speaker 1: in America doing some work here and doing things like
Speaker 1: Star Wars. That is when it just felt so out odds.
Speaker 1: You know, the perception and the reality couldn't be more different,
Speaker 1: and that's something that's stressful, absurd, what's so kind of funny,
Speaker 1: and so I wanted to kind of liberate myself of
Speaker 1: that shame hopefully invite other people to liberate themselves of
Speaker 1: that shame as well by actually trying to collapse that
Speaker 1: distance between the public and private self. So I'm always
Speaker 1: an actor. What if I make a show that's taking
Speaker 1: all my vulnerabilities and euroses and laugh about them and
Speaker 1: put them out there. And it's so much in the
Speaker 1: show that's really directly from my upbringing. There's that skinhead
Speaker 1: moment a version of it. I had a panic attack
Speaker 1: once when I was supporting Wu Tang Clan concert at
Speaker 1: Kenish Town Forum in North London. We refilmed me having
Speaker 1: a panic attack your Kentish Town Forum. I said, I
Speaker 1: want to do the same place. I want to burst
Speaker 1: out into the same alleyway and have the same panic
Speaker 1: attack there. Even you know the British Security Services m
Speaker 1: I five and m I six recruiting my character.
Speaker 2: They've tried to do that with me.
Speaker 1: I can't believe that that's a crazy story. I became
Speaker 1: more known as an actor. They reached out several times
Speaker 1: saying do you want to help us with messaging? Do
Speaker 1: you want to sit down? I was like, oh, my artist,
Speaker 1: I'm not getting involved, mate, no, thank you. But I
Speaker 1: just tried to take all these kind of moments of
Speaker 1: confusion and contradiction and try and put them out there, because,
Speaker 1: like you said that, the gap between your public and
Speaker 1: privateself can feel like a straight jacket. And I think
Speaker 1: we're all doing it. You don't have to be you
Speaker 1: or me, like I said, We're all kind of performing.
Speaker 1: It feels like these days.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I feel the challenges and I love that idea,
Speaker 2: the one that you shared. Just now this the gap
Speaker 2: between your public and private self. How big shame is
Speaker 2: or how deep the shame you experience. And I think
Speaker 2: that the biggest challenge becomes when you never leave the stage.
Speaker 2: And so everyone has to perform. Everyone has to perform
Speaker 2: at work, everyone has to perform with family. You know
Speaker 2: there's going to be praises in your life where you
Speaker 2: have to perform. Life is that way. But if you
Speaker 2: never leave the stage and you feel like your performance
Speaker 2: on stage is who you are and is reflective of
Speaker 2: your worth, that feels like when you're really stuck, because
Speaker 2: now you're saying the value I get from being on
Speaker 2: the stage is all the value I have. And especially
Speaker 2: if when you leave the stage, you're trying to be
Speaker 2: as boring as possible. Do you know what I'm trying
Speaker 2: to say, You're trying to be as imperfect as possible.
Speaker 2: What is love?
Speaker 1: What is your safe place? What are your safe relationships?
Speaker 1: To the place where you don't have to perform, we
Speaker 1: get to be the messy, chaotic, neurotic, boring version of yourself,
Speaker 1: and so this weird things happen. It's like the place
Speaker 1: of love and safety is a place where and it
Speaker 1: should be like this, you know, like my cousins they
Speaker 1: laugh about what I do with one of my cousins, right,
Speaker 1: and they respect football together fifty exactly right. But what
Speaker 1: I think I love about that WhatsApp group my cousins
Speaker 1: is when I got nominated fro An Oscar for acting,
Speaker 1: one of my cousins genuinely was like, okay, cool, Like
Speaker 1: what is that big deal is that? Like when I
Speaker 1: won Regional Employee of the Month. I was about to
Speaker 1: say like, well, no, it's saud, she's not like waing
Speaker 1: regional employee, and another cousin came in and went, no,
Speaker 1: it's not like that, because you actually won that award
Speaker 1: Regional Employing the month.
Speaker 2: He didn't win. Oh that's that's healthy, That's that's good.
Speaker 2: Do you know what I mean? To have your safe
Speaker 2: place be one where those things don't matter with the
Speaker 2: performances in material, But it can be lopsided, right, So
Speaker 2: people get addicted to being out there and getting a
Speaker 2: pat on the back. Not only are we trying to
Speaker 2: be liked or validated, It's like what again is set
Speaker 2: up for is trying to be something you're not. So
Speaker 2: obviously your characters trying to become the next James Bond.
Speaker 2: And it's not really about it's this idea of I'm
Speaker 2: trying to be something I'm not, And I think that
Speaker 2: is even more difficult than just trying to be liked,
Speaker 2: because before there's one version of you trying to be
Speaker 2: liked for who you are, and now you're trying to
Speaker 2: be liked for someone you'll never be. And that's like
Speaker 2: an even more complicated place to be because now you're
Speaker 2: taking on traits, personality, types, clothing, whatever. I mean, I'm
Speaker 2: half disappointed didn't show up in a tux today, you
Speaker 2: know that, right, Like it's like for everyone else the
Speaker 2: subway takes you show up and everyone else to have
Speaker 2: to be This is where I get to be boring.
Speaker 2: You're not worried, look great, but yeah, it's like but
Speaker 2: that idea of trying to be someone when not I
Speaker 2: find that to be like the the Golden handcuffs, the
Speaker 2: drug of society where I remember when I started, when
Speaker 2: I left the monastery and I started working in the
Speaker 2: corporate world just to pay the bills and survive. I
Speaker 2: remember thinking to myself, this place is trying to make
Speaker 2: me someone that I'm not. Yeah, And I could spend
Speaker 2: thirty years here becoming someone that I'm not, become partner,
Speaker 2: could make money, whatever. And that's the challenge people having
Speaker 2: to work with. Because we're lucky, we get to express
Speaker 2: who we are through our work and tell stories and everything.
Speaker 2: But when I think about someone who's like, yeah, I've
Speaker 2: got you know, Riz, That's what I've got to do
Speaker 2: every day, Like I have to be someone I'm not.
Speaker 1: Do you think that we all have an essential essence
Speaker 1: and go this is who you are? Like I said,
Speaker 1: I grew up code switching with these very different sides
Speaker 1: to myself wearing a school uniform school and then shamakam
Speaker 1: he's at home and rebolt classics and fake vsace out
Speaker 1: with my friends, literally changing costumes, accent, and personality. It
Speaker 1: is a form of acting. Now try and bring all
Speaker 1: of that together, making things like bait or my version
Speaker 1: of Hamlet or whatever. We bring these different things together
Speaker 1: in one place. Do we have an essential center? Isn't
Speaker 1: it just about our circumstances and our environment? This is
Speaker 1: when I'm asking you to say something profound. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: need you to help me out with this. What's your
Speaker 1: take on this? Do you think we have like, Okay,
Speaker 1: this is you at your core, and that's you your core.
Speaker 2: I believe that life is more about a collection and
Speaker 2: connection of ideas and stories and narratives that you've built,
Speaker 2: as opposed to a center that was always the case.
Speaker 2: And it can sound easy to say it, but actually
Speaker 2: it's really hard. Like I always say to people, I'm
Speaker 2: as much in love with monk wisdom as I am
Speaker 2: with building a media empire, as I am with being
Speaker 2: a loving partner, as I am with a good friend.
Speaker 2: Like I'm like in love with all of those parts
Speaker 2: of myself, and I'm like trying to become okay with
Speaker 2: all of those things, those things that are seen as
Speaker 2: contradictions correct and paradoxical, and they feel like they don't mesh.
Speaker 2: But I'm like, if everyone sat down and asked themselves
Speaker 2: who they were, I think we all have paradoxism. Yeah.
Speaker 2: We've been taught to say I'm an accountant, I'm married,
Speaker 2: I'm Hindu, I'm whatever. It is. Like, we've been taught
Speaker 2: to have very simple labels which are very you know, incomplete. Yeah,
Speaker 2: And I guess it's like less about finding your self
Speaker 2: means being in one lane.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't believe in that. Yeah, I think that
Speaker 1: having all these different sides to who we are is
Speaker 1: human and universal and healthy in a way. Over the
Speaker 1: last ten years or so, I kind of really went
Speaker 1: on this journey of trying to make work from a
Speaker 1: more personal place. When I came into this game, I
Speaker 1: felt like, for some reason, I had to justify it
Speaker 1: beyond just myself enjoying it. Now, I'm like, actually, my
Speaker 1: joy is valid joy, and if other people take joy
Speaker 1: from my work, that's valid as well. But I always
Speaker 1: felt like it's got to be a have a greater purpose, right,
Speaker 1: And for me, that was about trying to stretch culture,
Speaker 1: this idea of one person at a time, one film screening,
Speaker 1: one performance at a time, opening people's hearts and minds
Speaker 1: to an experience that they didn't think.
Speaker 2: They could relate to.
Speaker 1: But actually, wow, I recognize myself in it. It's like
Speaker 1: I was a big fan of watching The Crown, and
Speaker 1: you know when you're watching The Crown and you're suddenly like,
Speaker 1: I'm the Queen of England. That's me, I totally you
Speaker 1: know how it's this amazing body swap that story can achieve, right,
Speaker 1: And so to try and open people's hearts and minds,
Speaker 1: to realizing that we're all the same, we're all one,
Speaker 1: and to stretch culture in that way. And before I
Speaker 1: used to think, Okay, that means me popping up in
Speaker 1: all these roles that are as different as possible, to
Speaker 1: me change people's ideas about who can play that role.
Speaker 2: Who can be in a Star Wars movie, and all
Speaker 2: this kind of stuff. And now more and more I think,
Speaker 2: like I want to share them, messy contradiction of myself.
Speaker 2: I used to think acting was about putting on the mask.
Speaker 2: Now I think it's about taking it off. It's actually
Speaker 2: about sharing the most personal thing possible, and that ends
Speaker 2: up being the most universal yeah thing, Yeah, you know.
Speaker 2: It's something actually I've never really talked about publicly before Jay,
Speaker 2: But I did this film called Mogul Mowgli, and it's
Speaker 2: a a guy who an artist, who suddenly loses his
Speaker 2: ability to walk, becomes tremendously ill overnight, and is never
Speaker 2: sure if he's going to get his life back. It
Speaker 2: was an expiration of lots of themes that I was
Speaker 2: interested in creatively. But what people don't know is that
Speaker 2: that basically really happened to me. It was twenty fifteen
Speaker 2: and I just started filming Star Wars. I'd never done
Speaker 2: studio movie before, never done a big franchise. I never
Speaker 2: thought that would be my path. I was really happy
Speaker 2: doing indies like Nightcrawler and Four Lions. I suddenly got
Speaker 2: to be in this film set with stormtroopers and all
Speaker 2: these big things. I was like, Wow, this is going
Speaker 2: to happen for me. One week into filming that, I
Speaker 2: started getting weird pain in my legs, and I thought, okay,
Speaker 2: maybe I've pulled something during one of the action scenes.
Speaker 2: And I woke up one morning and I couldn't get
Speaker 2: out of bed and I couldn't walk. Tried to go
Speaker 2: to a hospital. They were like, they just kind of like,
Speaker 2: palm me off. They didn't weren't really sure what it was.
Speaker 2: I went to the hospital back in my parents' neighborhood,
Speaker 2: the same hospital I was born in. When I was visiting,
Speaker 2: my parents said let me go and check get checked
Speaker 2: out there. They immediately saw what was happening and they
Speaker 2: were like, you need to be admitted to hospital straight away.
Speaker 2: I remember saying, I can't do how the fhilic Star
Speaker 2: Wars right now, and they said, you're in a very
Speaker 2: dangerous situation right now, and I'll explain to you what's happening,
Speaker 2: but you need to be hospitalized immediately. And I just
Speaker 2: felt like, what's happening to me? It's my life kind
Speaker 2: of falling apart before my eyes. I ended up spending
Speaker 2: two and a half months in hospital. I was unable
Speaker 2: to walk. I went down to just under fifty kilos, wow,
Speaker 2: one hundred pounds. You know. I couldn't lift my arms,
Speaker 2: I couldn't walk, and.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I was kind of going to a stroke gym
Speaker 1: every day. A weird thing happens when your life falls
Speaker 1: apart like that, when you're confronted with your complete lack
Speaker 1: of control. It's really humbling. We realize, if I don't
Speaker 1: even control my own body, then maybe everything that I
Speaker 1: do have is a gift. And I remember being in hospital.
Speaker 1: Forget going back to film the rest of Star Wars,
Speaker 1: forget having a career ever being able to walk again.
Speaker 1: I remember being sat there and seeing like a pigeon
Speaker 1: sat on the window sill of this NHS hospital.
Speaker 2: And being almost moved to tears with by its beauty.
Speaker 2: It sounds baby, sounds crazy, but maybe you can relate
Speaker 2: what I'm saying, where you're just like, man, I did
Speaker 2: nothing to deserve that pigeon coming to visit me. I
Speaker 2: get to see up close. Pigeons are actually amazing. They're
Speaker 2: like a little bit green and red, and you're getting
Speaker 2: seen the sunlight shine off of it, this thing that
Speaker 2: I'd taken for granted. I was just absolutely blown away
Speaker 2: by this animal.
Speaker 1: It's wild animal that was there, and I felt this
Speaker 1: sense of such humility and gratitude. And I've always believed
Speaker 1: since then it's when you're brought to your knees that
Speaker 1: you're halfway towards praying. It brings you closer to the
Speaker 1: love in the universe. And I went on a real
Speaker 1: journey and that's when I kind of really started meditating
Speaker 1: in earnest. I had this kind of crazy, crazy journey
Speaker 1: where I had to kind of almost grieve and let
Speaker 1: go of my life the way I thought it would be.
Speaker 2: And it was almost like I felt like God was
Speaker 2: the universe was saying, in all this stuff that you want,
Speaker 2: it's like happening for you now, right, make sure you
Speaker 2: appreciate it. Don't take it for granted. You know, I
Speaker 2: was being taught gratitude just before being given the gift.
Speaker 2: My friends are texting me like, bro, I've just seen
Speaker 2: the Star Wars phos Man, like you're going to be
Speaker 2: in Star Wars. I'm in a hospital desperately trying to
Speaker 2: get the nurses attention because I can't get out to
Speaker 2: go as a toilet and don't want to wet the bed.
Speaker 2: My life is just it couldn't be more different to
Speaker 2: what people are perceiving it to be. It was something
Speaker 2: about that experience made me want to start telling work
Speaker 2: from a personal place. And the reason for that is
Speaker 2: that I felt a lot of.
Speaker 1: Shame around it. I felt a deep sense of shame,
Speaker 1: and you know, I've never really talked about it publicly now,
Speaker 1: but for anyone else going to that right now, I
Speaker 1: wanted to kind of share that and offer that as
Speaker 1: an experience because I felt this kind of weird shame
Speaker 1: and I felt this critical in a voice coming out
Speaker 1: that was like, you deserve this, this is what you
Speaker 1: should be, You belong up care getting straight back, don
Speaker 1: this is your fate. How dare you think you could
Speaker 1: be happy? You have the things you want and all
Speaker 1: this shame and all this kind of like this really
Speaker 1: venomous voice was coming out and I was like, actually,
Speaker 1: this is the thing that's killing me. The only way
Speaker 1: to heal myself of that voice is by owning it.
Speaker 1: Is owning my experience, losing the shame around my experience,
Speaker 1: losing my shame around who I am. That's what Mogo
Speaker 1: Mowgli's about, That's what bait is about. Because I believe,
Speaker 1: you know, what happened to me was a kind of
Speaker 1: autoimmune condition, right, And autoimmune condition is when the body
Speaker 1: attacks itself. And I know we're both big fans of
Speaker 1: that book The Body keeps a score, you know. It
Speaker 1: was my belief that I wasn't war with myself, that
Speaker 1: my critical inner voice was so out of control. I
Speaker 1: was always attacking myself, beating myself over the stick so
Speaker 1: much that in a way, my body had turned on itself.
Speaker 1: I mean, I told this story jokingly before about one
Speaker 1: but I'd tell you, which is two years after I'd
Speaker 1: finished filming The night of I'd still get up in
Speaker 1: the middle of the night, go to the bathroom and
Speaker 1: start running scenes again. This is the show has come out.
Speaker 1: I want an Emmy for this role. It's done. I
Speaker 1: should have moved on my life, but still in the back.
Speaker 2: Of my head.
Speaker 1: It's like, not good enough, You're not good enough. It's embarrassing.
Speaker 1: How you think I was gonna get back up there
Speaker 1: do it again?
Speaker 2: Wow? So I had this voice in me and my
Speaker 2: is my belief that that critical inner voice led me
Speaker 2: to that hospital bed, and I had to look it
Speaker 2: in the eye and say, normal, shame, man, normal shame.
Speaker 2: I'm going to own this. I'm going to create work
Speaker 2: from this. And that's what Sound of Metal was, That's
Speaker 2: where Mogo Mowgli was coming from. That direct experience in
Speaker 2: the universe brought me a Sound of Metal, which is
Speaker 2: also about an artist going through a health crisis. And
Speaker 2: I was like, no, you're not done with it. You've
Speaker 2: got to go back there. You gotta make work from
Speaker 2: this place. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Man, I have long, deep history with this critical voice
Speaker 1: and this shame, and I really think it can kill you.
Speaker 2: Man.
Speaker 1: It's not something that I'm done with. But I think
Speaker 1: that critical in a voice just he's not the guy
Speaker 1: on the megaphone, but he's a guy who's always going
Speaker 1: to be at the party. He's maybe, if I'm lucky,
Speaker 1: he's at the corner of the party.
Speaker 2: As hard as it, maybe talk to me about the
Speaker 2: lowest moment, the worst day of going through that time
Speaker 2: in hospital, because those are the moments that we all
Speaker 2: have experienced rock bottom. But those are the moments you
Speaker 2: never hear people talk about because they're scary. Yeah, And
Speaker 2: I feel like when I'm hearing you talk about that,
Speaker 2: I'm like, it sounds like you were dealing with a
Speaker 2: lot for something mental to become physically that deabilitating when
Speaker 2: you're a fit, young man, healthy man in general, Like
Speaker 2: that means there was a real war within yourself, as
Speaker 2: you've rightly said it. Talk to me as much as
Speaker 2: you can about that.
Speaker 1: I was alone at night in the hospital and they
Speaker 1: were pumping me full of a lot of steroids intravenously
Speaker 1: and stories keep you up right, and I couldn't sleep
Speaker 1: and I.
Speaker 2: Just felt completely alone.
Speaker 1: Whatever was going on with me, it was resistant to treatment.
Speaker 1: So I got a tiny bit better, and then it
Speaker 1: went It was going south, and it started sensing that
Speaker 1: maybe there was some It might be affecting my heart,
Speaker 1: and it might be affecting my ability to breathe, and
Speaker 1: it was certainly was affecting my ability to swallow. I
Speaker 1: remember this because the people on set stuff was God
Speaker 1: bless them. They carried on sending me food to the hospital,
Speaker 1: and I was having trouble swallowing it, and I was like,
Speaker 1: am I going to make my way out of this?
Speaker 2: Am I going to die? Here? Is what I started
Speaker 2: asking myself. And I started talking to God.
Speaker 1: And I remember that rock bottom moment again, like I said,
Speaker 1: when you're brought to your knees, when you're halfway to praying.
Speaker 1: It was that moment of total helplessness that I started
Speaker 1: talking to God and I said, if you please give
Speaker 1: me a chance, if you please let me live, I
Speaker 1: promise you as much as I can.
Speaker 2: I will give. I want to give. And what I
Speaker 2: meant by that was and I said, like, I just
Speaker 2: feel I haven't emptied myself yet. You know I've got
Speaker 2: more to give. And I remember just pleading with God
Speaker 2: and just the tears just streaming down my face. It's
Speaker 2: just saying, yeah, if you just let me live, if
Speaker 2: you let me get through this, I promise you I will.
Speaker 2: I will empty myself and try and give from whatever
Speaker 2: you've given me. And it was incredibly scary. And the
Speaker 2: next morning, I remember they said they said that they
Speaker 2: might have to start a really intensive kind of chemo
Speaker 2: on me. God man, I mean that's it's a harrowing
Speaker 2: time like in your life. Like that's like just when
Speaker 2: I hear about it, because I I not not It
Speaker 2: wasn't life threatening. But my version of the mental turning
Speaker 2: in the physical was I developed while I was a monk.
Speaker 2: I developed polyps in my throat, and so these get
Speaker 2: on your vocal cords, and people generally get it from
Speaker 2: like vocal exhaustion or lack of vocal rest or some
Speaker 2: sort of vocal disruption. And I think for us in
Speaker 2: the monastery, it was mantra, it was chanting, it was
Speaker 2: you know, and and I do not have a singing voice,
Speaker 2: for whatever it's worth, but I think my vocal range
Speaker 2: is pretty limited and I was probably straining it. I
Speaker 2: don't even know how it happened. That's that's the physical version,
Speaker 2: but we all know there's well from what we're talking about,
Speaker 2: there's so much more to it, whether it's a lack
Speaker 2: of expression, a lack of authentic communication of where you're at.
Speaker 2: And I remember having to get them lasered off my throat,
Speaker 2: and so I went into surgery got them lasered off.
Speaker 2: It's pretty like you know, you don't feel it yesterday.
Speaker 2: It it's not like I said, it's not life threatening,
Speaker 2: but like for months after, you're drinking from a straw
Speaker 2: because you can't eat proper food, okay, and you can't talk.
Speaker 2: So I have a white board and I remember moving
Speaker 2: in back with my parents at the time because I
Speaker 2: couldn't be in the monastery, and I'd literally write to
Speaker 2: my mom like what I could eat, water, whatever it was.
Speaker 2: And I'm literally carrying a whiteboard around my neck basically
Speaker 2: and just writing stuff to my family because I can't
Speaker 2: say anything. And at that time, I'm like, I give
Speaker 2: speeches at colleges, I give talk to the temple. I'm
Speaker 2: like speaking is my thing, Like that's what I do course,
Speaker 2: and it's all gone and its disappeared in like I
Speaker 2: can't even say anything, Like I'm writing words on a whiteboard,
Speaker 2: and I remember feeling very similarly to what you're saying
Speaker 2: about seeing that pigeon praying to God like I can
Speaker 2: relate to it. And again like mine was not life threatening.
Speaker 2: You know, there's a difference between not speaking and not walking. No,
Speaker 2: but it's profound because it's your your gift turns to
Speaker 2: your curse. It's like the thing that you are blessed.
Speaker 1: With, which is his ability to communicate in this desire,
Speaker 1: this purpose you have, that is the thing that's taken
Speaker 1: from correct And so how has that affected the way
Speaker 1: that you I mean, did that just make you even
Speaker 1: more motivated to speak and to choose your words and
Speaker 1: think about your words.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I had to go to a vocal coach to
Speaker 2: train and all of that kind of stuff, and they
Speaker 2: said that you would get your you know, your natural
Speaker 2: voice would come back. It came back softer. I'd lost
Speaker 2: the raspiness and the depth of my voice. I sounded different. Now,
Speaker 2: I sound back to normal. If anything, maybe it's a
Speaker 2: bit better now. So I'm God take it. But like
Speaker 2: at the time, it was like I was like, God,
Speaker 2: I'm gonna have to learn how to talk it yet,
Speaker 2: Like that's how it felt, and what it did for
Speaker 2: me was a few things. I remember talking to one
Speaker 2: spiritual guide at the time and I said to him,
Speaker 2: I said, I can't speak to God out loud anymore,
Speaker 2: like I can't hear myself talk to God. I can't chant.
Speaker 2: I can't mantra is such a big part of Eastern tradition.
Speaker 2: I can't I can't chant out loud, and you're meant
Speaker 2: to chant out loud so you can hear the spiritual
Speaker 2: sacred sound like that's our practice. And he goes to me,
Speaker 2: He goes, God's teaching you to chant with your heart
Speaker 2: like and I was like, God, like that that at
Speaker 2: that time, I just remember that like hitting me. It
Speaker 2: was like he was like, yeah, you think, well, you
Speaker 2: think you talk to God out loud, like you think
Speaker 2: that's what God listens to. He was like, God's listening
Speaker 2: to this, like God knows what's going on in here.
Speaker 2: It's got nothing to do with sound and voice. And
Speaker 2: I was like, wow, that's that's huge to learn to
Speaker 2: talk to God with my heart. What does that even mean? Yes?
Speaker 2: And then at the same time, it's what you said
Speaker 2: where it was like, Okay, now that my voice is
Speaker 2: starting to come back, how am I going to respect
Speaker 2: the fact that I have a voice like to and
Speaker 2: you know, to not take it for granted, to be like,
Speaker 2: how can you feel that this ease with which we're
Speaker 2: talking right now and we're communicating and I can hear you,
Speaker 2: you can hear me. When that goes away, God, life
Speaker 2: feels colorless, and you know it loses so much value
Speaker 2: and so again, and you know we were talking about
Speaker 2: this offline as well, like when you of course you
Speaker 2: forget all this, you started taking all the gifts for granted, again,
Speaker 2: you probably have to in a way to try and
Speaker 2: kind of move through the trauma. But I don't know
Speaker 2: if you have moments where you remember that and you
Speaker 2: just sink into that deep sense of humility and gratitude,
Speaker 2: and humility is the word. I mean. You're taking me
Speaker 2: back that Actually, I don't think I've actually thought about this.
Speaker 2: I don't. I don't think I've talked about it publicly.
Speaker 2: To be honest myself, I don't. I can't remember if
Speaker 2: I've actually talked about it. And I'm being reminded of
Speaker 2: your experience, like your your experience triggering me going yeah
Speaker 2: like that, you know it was intense. That was intense,
Speaker 2: and I don't traumatic. Yeah, it was traumatic. But all
Speaker 2: of that to say, with all of yours, talk to
Speaker 2: me about where does the shame come from going through
Speaker 2: something like that and then not wanting to share it,
Speaker 2: Because I think there's the pain of going through something traumatic,
Speaker 2: and there's then there's the pain of communicating it to
Speaker 2: a group of people who may or may not actually
Speaker 2: understand what the hell you just went through. Yeah, but
Speaker 2: talk to me about where was the shame for you
Speaker 2: in wanting to share that and what kept in for
Speaker 2: so long? I will, But can I first tell you
Speaker 2: something about your voice? Yeah? I love your voice. But
Speaker 2: here's the thing.
Speaker 1: When I sometimes I'm walking down the street, it doesn't
Speaker 1: happen to be a lot, but it's happened to me
Speaker 1: enough times I want to mention it. Sometimes people stop
Speaker 1: me and they say, say, I'm on the phone or whatever.
Speaker 1: They've heard me talking.
Speaker 2: They go, So, I just tell you sound exactly that.
Speaker 2: That is hilarious. I'll take that as a complidence. I'll
Speaker 2: take it as a compliment. Bro, you'd make an amazing MC.
Speaker 2: I think you've got a great You've got a great
Speaker 2: voice for that. Yeah, come on, So I just want
Speaker 2: to give your voice its flowers. Yeah, the shame? You know.
Speaker 2: I think that the show is about this idea of
Speaker 2: wanting to be James Bond. I wanted that. I mean,
Speaker 2: who doesn't or if not exactly that a version of that. Now,
Speaker 2: what I mean by that is like you want to
Speaker 2: aspire to this archetype of heroism and that is about
Speaker 2: being this kind of invulnerable, powerful alpha male, whatever that means,
Speaker 2: although hilariously, I mean the alpha male in a wolf
Speaker 2: pack is the animal that lets the kids beat it
Speaker 2: up the most, you know, and it's like the most
Speaker 2: chill and the least aggressive, right. But we have these
Speaker 2: ideas in our culture, and I guess I didn't want to.
Speaker 2: I already felt like I don't.
Speaker 1: Fit the mold, you know, for all the reasons we've
Speaker 1: already discussed to be experienced growing up. I don't want
Speaker 1: another strike against me of people somehow thinking I'm weak,
Speaker 1: you know, or I'm fragile or I Whereas now I
Speaker 1: look at it, it's like watchually, I feel like I
Speaker 1: showed a lot of resources and strength and mental and
Speaker 1: physical you know, teaching yourself to walk again or lift
Speaker 1: your arms or whatever that takes strength. And I can
Speaker 1: say that now. The time I just saw the GLO
Speaker 1: was half empty of it, and I thought, I don't
Speaker 1: even want anyone to think that weak, unbroken, that I'm
Speaker 1: not up up to the mark. Yeah, And in a way,
Speaker 1: I actually think that there's some truth in that that
Speaker 1: I think the culture has shifted a little bit more,
Speaker 1: you know, I think we do because of spaces like
Speaker 1: this Man that you've created and other people have created
Speaker 1: where we can talk and celebrate our vulnerabilities a bit more,
Speaker 1: you know.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's talking about this right now. My body
Speaker 2: right now is kind of like going, oh God, did
Speaker 2: I just say all this? Did I do all this?
Speaker 2: But I also feel a bit lighter. It's that thing
Speaker 2: of digging inside. Like I said, it's an offering.
Speaker 1: You know, if there's someone going through something like this
Speaker 1: just watching this, if it normalizes their experience, if it
Speaker 1: makes them feel less alone, that's beautiful, you know, and
Speaker 1: I want to share that. I think it was that really,
Speaker 1: I think it was kind of my again, it was
Speaker 1: the distance between that public and privateself, and I felt
Speaker 1: that if my public self gets too close to my reality,
Speaker 1: it'll fall apart.
Speaker 2: Again. Yeah, well said, yeah, no, I really believe you
Speaker 2: sharing that, especially talking about perception in that externally, everyone
Speaker 2: can be like, oh, you're winning, your career has been amazing.
Speaker 2: You want emmy, He's like, osc you know all this stuff,
Speaker 2: and it's like to actually go, oh wait a minute,
Speaker 2: even him, like there's stuff he's going through not only
Speaker 2: is affecting him mentally physically and that mental physical connection
Speaker 2: that I want people to make here, which I know
Speaker 2: you do too, which is this idea that a lot
Speaker 2: of what we're going through physically is coming from some
Speaker 2: sort of emotional block, mental block. And in Bait you
Speaker 2: visualize that as this severed pig's head, which is this
Speaker 2: Patrick Stewart voice, severed pig's head.
Speaker 1: So yes, the critical inner voice in Bait is a
Speaker 1: severed pig's head. It was sent to the family as
Speaker 1: a racist attack, and it's about I guess how we
Speaker 1: can internalize the criticism of us, internalize the prejudice, so
Speaker 1: it starts to become almost like his best friend. And
Speaker 1: for me, for a long time, my critical in a
Speaker 1: voice was something I didn't want to lose. I was
Speaker 1: worried that if I make peace with it, will turn
Speaker 1: the volume down on that too much. I'll get lazy,
Speaker 1: I'll get complacent. I remember even when we won an
Speaker 1: Oscar for our short film, It's so funny. It was
Speaker 1: almost like the oscar was looking at me, going, you
Speaker 1: ain't shit. The kind of elation lasted as long as
Speaker 1: me going there, collecting it, going backstage, going to the toilet,
Speaker 1: coming back and sitting down again by the time I
Speaker 1: said down. In fact, I would say my critical inner
Speaker 1: voice was an all time high when I was sat
Speaker 1: there holding that oscre in my hand, because it was
Speaker 1: almost like a survival mechanism. My brain was going with
Speaker 1: that voice. That part of my brain was going, don't
Speaker 1: put your feet up now, don't think you can get complacent,
Speaker 1: don't kick back. I've programmed you to strive, not to savor,
Speaker 1: and so you're now are going to really crack the whip.
Speaker 1: It's just it was just going crazy. I remember sitting
Speaker 1: there in that seat having the most aggressively critical thoughts
Speaker 1: to myself.
Speaker 2: It was like out of control. But in the show's
Speaker 2: played by seven Pigshead. I want you to know. There
Speaker 2: was a moment, long moment I was like, it has
Speaker 2: to be Ja.
Speaker 1: We ended up getting Sir Patrick's steward to someone who's
Speaker 1: I thought, it has to be a really kind of
Speaker 1: super established actor, one of the great so it makes
Speaker 1: sure my character feel insecure. Actually, if you have my
Speaker 1: evil twins, I mean, it's not a slight resemblance. Maybe
Speaker 1: I was like, yeah, what if it should be j
Speaker 1: J should be my critical in a voice that would
Speaker 1: be hus so funny, Patrick Stewart was was the right choice.
Speaker 1: It was one of those moments in the show where
Speaker 1: you're like, what, like, it's such a surprise, right, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: talk to me about that, because I think what you
Speaker 1: just identified is the high performers an overachiever's curse, where
Speaker 1: the inner critic is what drives you to extraordinary success.
Speaker 2: Do you think? Usually right, Usually from everyone I've interviewed,
Speaker 2: whether it's basketball players, whether it's tennis players, whether it's
Speaker 2: F one drivers, that they won't say the same thing. Basically,
Speaker 2: the athletes who I think are playing at the levels
Speaker 2: where every inch counts, in every minute matters, they all
Speaker 2: have this crazy inner critic which they have to learn
Speaker 2: what to do with it because in the moment they
Speaker 2: have to believe that this point is the only thing
Speaker 2: that matters, and then as soon as they win or
Speaker 2: lose the point, they have to believe that point doesn't
Speaker 2: matter at all. Wow, because that's the switch there, so
Speaker 2: that their code switch or that is that it's like,
Speaker 2: when I'm playing this point, this is the most important
Speaker 2: point in the world, and as soon as the point's over,
Speaker 2: whether I win or lost the point, that points of relevance.
Speaker 1: So you need the inner critic and the inner cheerleader totally.
Speaker 1: You've you've got to basically be able to toggle between
Speaker 1: them both. Yeah, it's interesting. I don't want to believe
Speaker 1: that the inner critic is the jet fuel. I want
Speaker 1: to believe that it's like one of the engines, right,
Speaker 1: But there's got to be that other engine because you know,
Speaker 1: I also feel that, Yes, I feel like the inn
Speaker 1: a critic, or that fear of failure, the possibility of shame,
Speaker 1: all these things can drive us. But I think it
Speaker 1: can also make us quite tense. And I think our
Speaker 1: best performances come when we're in a state of flow.
Speaker 1: And that is about, like you're saying, too tight to loose,
Speaker 1: that is also about being kind of loose. That's about
Speaker 1: a joy. It's about openness and receptivity and play and curiosity. Yeah,
Speaker 1: all those things that the critic does not really give us.
Speaker 1: And so yeah, for me, it's like on that mixing
Speaker 1: desk of the voices in my head. You don't want
Speaker 1: to the voice in my head. Y, there's a lot
Speaker 1: of them.
Speaker 2: You're one of them.
Speaker 1: But I'm trying to just find that right balance and
Speaker 1: find the right moment to bring up that cheerleader.
Speaker 2: Versus the critic. I'm glad you said that, because I
Speaker 2: would agree with you, and I would encourage people to
Speaker 2: go there, especially if you're a high achiever, high performer,
Speaker 2: or even if you have goals and you think the
Speaker 2: only way to get there is to make yourself feel
Speaker 2: bad and beat yourself up and to actually go Well,
Speaker 2: that isn't the way I want to get there. There
Speaker 2: is a way of getting there that isn't that. That
Speaker 2: just seems to be the most common way that a
Speaker 2: lot of successful people have got there, but then they
Speaker 2: didn't like what they got either. I think it can
Speaker 2: get you to a place, but then it will kill you. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: You know people would whip horses to like make them
Speaker 1: run faster. You're going to kill that horse or somewhere you're.
Speaker 2: Going to really get exhausted. Yeah, that's a great vision.
Speaker 1: I'm trying to find a way of something else kind
Speaker 1: of taking over. And honestly, I kind of feel like,
Speaker 1: well you're talking about before with kids, that's been a
Speaker 1: great teacher for me. You know, play just on a
Speaker 1: really basic level, play the joy of that, the curiosity
Speaker 1: of it, as you're not being in control that's been
Speaker 1: a great teacher for me, not least because actually I
Speaker 1: think kids you can't control them. Really, I mean, they
Speaker 1: humble you every day, right they they totally kind of
Speaker 1: you know, is that thing where you don't raise your kids,
Speaker 1: they raise you? So I don't know, I think that
Speaker 1: that's kind of something I'm trying to pass. It's on
Speaker 1: from the critic to the to the cheerlead that to
Speaker 1: the child.
Speaker 2: Yeah, to the child. I like that. Yeah, there's this
Speaker 2: there's this beautiful quote from Jorge Bernard Sure that I
Speaker 2: love where he said we don't stop playing because we
Speaker 2: get old. We get old because we stop playing. And
Speaker 2: I love that, Like it's just it's so good because
Speaker 2: I'm like, yeah, Like, that's why we feel old is
Speaker 2: because we stop playing, we stop being curious, we stop
Speaker 2: marveling at the greatness of a velcrow shoe, that simplicity.
Speaker 2: And that's why time I was looking into actually, because
Speaker 2: that's why as we get older. I'm sure you feel
Speaker 2: this way too, time just flies. Every adult I talk to,
Speaker 2: they're like, yeah, God, time's just going fast.
Speaker 1: Apparently that is a proven fact that our brains subjectively
Speaker 1: experience time differently as we get older.
Speaker 2: Yes.
Speaker 1: So in terms of subjectively the spread of our life
Speaker 1: and how it feels to our brains is fifty percent
Speaker 1: of our life is lived between the age of zero
Speaker 1: and eight years old, which is crazy, that's like half
Speaker 1: of it because of how a day feels when you're
Speaker 1: a little kid, how expansive and huge it can feel,
Speaker 1: and how quick a year can feel towards the tail end.
Speaker 1: So yeah, as you're starting to feel more and more
Speaker 1: conscious of time and its passage, like what is that
Speaker 1: doing for you? Is that just means streamlining and focusing
Speaker 1: on the things you really want to or how are
Speaker 1: you managing with that?
Speaker 2: At one point in my life, I listened to Steve
Speaker 2: jobs is Standford commencement speech every day for nine months. Well,
Speaker 2: in my opinion, it's the best speech I ever given.
Speaker 2: Because he also knew he was going to die. So
Speaker 2: I feel like when someone knows they're going to die,
Speaker 2: it's that death awareness meditation, right, it's a big part
Speaker 2: of the kind of yeah, yeah, when that strict tradition
Speaker 2: in Eastern philosophy. Yeah, absolutely, and it's like every word mattered,
Speaker 2: like he didn't that wasn't performing if you see him
Speaker 2: do it. He also just reads it like deadpan, like
Speaker 2: there's no performance, there's no emphasis, there's no poet, like
Speaker 2: he's not trying. It's just truth. Yeah, because he knows
Speaker 2: he's going to die. So it's like there's a so
Speaker 2: I listened to that, and there's a line in it
Speaker 2: that just goes like something like, and I'll butcher it.
Speaker 2: Some people should listen to the real thing. But he
Speaker 2: literally says something like every few days, if I check
Speaker 2: him with myself and I ask myself, I look in
Speaker 2: the mirror, like, am I doing what I want to do?
Speaker 2: If this was my last day? And if after three
Speaker 2: or four days the answer isn't this is what I
Speaker 2: should be doing, then I know I've got something to change.
Speaker 2: And I'm like, I don't think we can all live
Speaker 2: like that all the time. I think there's you know,
Speaker 2: people have responsibilities and pressures and whatever. But I think
Speaker 2: there's truth to the idea of did you call the
Speaker 2: person that you would call if it was your last day.
Speaker 2: Did you talk to your partner in the way you
Speaker 2: would if it was the last time you were going
Speaker 2: to talk to them? Did you look at your kid
Speaker 2: before you went out to work in a way that
Speaker 2: you would want them to know was how much you
Speaker 2: loved them, Like, I think all those things do matter.
Speaker 2: That applies even if you've got to go to a
Speaker 2: job every day and you've got to say hello to people.
Speaker 2: It's like, did you behave with everyone in the way
Speaker 2: that you want to be remembered? I think that is
Speaker 2: important to me. And I think it's streamlining. I think
Speaker 2: it's focusing. I think it's all those things, but really
Speaker 2: it's more about it's less about what I do, and
Speaker 2: it's more about who I am, and in that, what
Speaker 2: is the spirit of my being. I've noticed versions of
Speaker 2: that where like, in order to become successful, I've had
Speaker 2: to be more technical, I've had to be more strategic,
Speaker 2: I've had to be more organized, I've had to be
Speaker 2: whatever whatever the words are. And then I go, I'm
Speaker 2: just a guy who loves the heart, Like that's who
Speaker 2: I am at the core of Like I'm just a
Speaker 2: guy who just wants to like love and be loved.
Speaker 2: Like that's who I am at my essence. And who
Speaker 2: are the people who can take me back to that
Speaker 2: in this crazy world where I have to be all
Speaker 2: these other versions of myself in order to do the
Speaker 2: thing people always say like, what's your favorite place? And
Speaker 2: I'm like, I'm never looking for my favorite place. I'm
Speaker 2: looking for my favorite people, because as long as I'm
Speaker 2: with my favorite people, it doesn't matter where I am.
Speaker 2: And so I'm looking for people actively always, yeah, that
Speaker 2: keep taking me back to that place within my heart
Speaker 2: and can do it quicker, more beautifully, more gracefully, more elegantly.
Speaker 2: And I find I'm some of them are old friends
Speaker 2: that have had for twenty twenty five years, yeah, And
Speaker 2: some of them are new people that I just met
Speaker 2: last year. People who can make you more yourself yeah yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: people who can make you forget yourself. Yeah. People who
Speaker 2: go beyond the performance of yeah yeah yeah, like the
Speaker 2: person who's not getting you to play up to your
Speaker 2: avatar or you're you know. And so I'm looking I'm
Speaker 2: always looking to not collectors in this. I don't need
Speaker 2: a million of those people. You've got to find a
Speaker 2: few people that you just drop in your nervous system
Speaker 2: calms down. You know, the active mind switch is so important,
Speaker 2: so important.
Speaker 1: It's interesting you say that because you know we're in
Speaker 1: LA right now, and I had a very kind of
Speaker 1: like you're making me think about this because I had
Speaker 1: this narrative where it was like, I don't like it,
Speaker 1: and you're actually making me think about this. Is like,
Speaker 1: there are a periods of time when I've ador lay
Speaker 1: and the thing that was surprising to me now is
Speaker 1: just before coming here, I was like, oh, I gotta
Speaker 1: go to La, man, being from London like walking, you know,
Speaker 1: like driving and everything spread out and I was like,
Speaker 1: you know, see any and all these kind of cliched criticisms, right,
Speaker 1: And yet I walk it out today in La absolutely
Speaker 1: loving it because.
Speaker 2: With my wife, with my.
Speaker 1: Kid, I'm with family, you know, family has come to visit.
Speaker 1: The house is full, and it's suddenly like being.
Speaker 2: Back as a kid, surrounded by clapping aunties or whatever,
Speaker 2: you know what I mean. It was just it just.
Speaker 1: Feels like that environment. It feels like home. And absolutely
Speaker 1: it's the people, man, it's the people that made the
Speaker 1: place one hundred percent. And yeah, I was kind of
Speaker 1: confronted with that realization this morning. I was like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: I've just slipped into this kind of lazy narrative. It's like,
Speaker 1: it's not what it's about.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And the time piece too that you brought up
Speaker 2: that I think is a really valuable thing. It's like,
Speaker 2: how much can I not try and fill time? And
Speaker 2: how much can I not try and be distracted? I
Speaker 2: find it hard, like kind of doing nothing. Yeah, something
Speaker 2: that is starting to help is reading. I'm very poorly read. Nah,
Speaker 2: I don't believe that. Yeah, I kind of through your work.
Speaker 2: I would like I pick up.
Speaker 1: A lot of things in like just a lot of
Speaker 1: music in the podcast, I watched talks.
Speaker 2: I go to talks, I talk to people. But I
Speaker 2: had like growing up crazy ADHD and I'll get into
Speaker 2: a lot of trouble at school. Now I look back,
Speaker 2: I'm like, oh, of course that's what that was. And
Speaker 2: you know there's loads of different ways in which that
Speaker 2: manifest So sitting down to read a book was like torture.
Speaker 2: It was historically again the narrative, oh I don't read.
Speaker 2: I can't read.
Speaker 1: Recently, particularly being married to a novelist, that was like,
Speaker 1: this is a bit of a deal breaker.
Speaker 2: You need to be reading books. At least read my book.
Speaker 2: I was like, Okay, I gotta sit down and do this.
Speaker 1: That is the thing that is allowing me to like
Speaker 1: sit and kind of do nothing. Again, it's forgetting myself,
Speaker 1: you know what. I mean, but I otherwise struggle with it.
Speaker 1: I can very easily fill time, create a new idea.
Speaker 1: Now let's progress it. What if we do that? What
Speaker 1: if we and I'm sure I don't know. How do
Speaker 1: you manage that?
Speaker 2: Is that something that you're also navigated? Had to set
Speaker 2: rules around it? Because I'm like that as well. I
Speaker 2: feel like I'm a creative brain. I like building stuff,
Speaker 2: I like playing with stuff. But I had to start
Speaker 2: just building real parameters around that. Where and what do
Speaker 2: you mean? Like as in you don't work after six pm?
Speaker 2: Or like yeah, it's like I won't think about work
Speaker 2: or be on my phone after six pm. Because to me,
Speaker 2: that rest and renewal is where the best ideas come out.
Speaker 2: Talking about flow state, I can't invent flow, I can't
Speaker 2: engineer it, I can't manufacture it, and so for it
Speaker 2: to exist, I need to be in this lucid state
Speaker 2: where it said something that randomly allowed for me to
Speaker 2: be inspired at eight pm and it came up and
Speaker 2: that's fine, but I don't need to act on it immediately.
Speaker 2: I just need to let it breathe and let it sit.
Speaker 1: Letting it sit, best ideas come on the toilets see
Speaker 1: bro in the shower and there's actually we started taking
Speaker 1: our phones to the toilets.
Speaker 2: The toilets now not the creative meccha used to be,
Speaker 2: but the shower man shower is always where you got Yeah,
Speaker 2: and actually, just to give Eliott's flowers, driving has been
Speaker 2: great for me. I agree in that sense where you're
Speaker 2: just going on these long drives and you allow the
Speaker 2: thing to bubble up. David Lynch to talk about the fish, right,
Speaker 2: the fish that we just swim to the surface. Sometimes
Speaker 2: if you could just allow the water to be still enough. Riz,
Speaker 2: I want to do a certain question for you that
Speaker 2: we've got that speak about everything we've been talking about.
Speaker 2: But we're going to do them as not rapid fire,
Speaker 2: but we're going to do them as quicker fire. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 2: not line rambling. I don't want you no no, no,
Speaker 2: you can give longer answers, but I want to kind
Speaker 2: of get out from you. So what's the hardest mask
Speaker 2: you've had to take off?
Speaker 1: I think it was probably around my health, Yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: kind of letting people into that even if it was happening.
Speaker 1: I was trying to keep people at a distance. I
Speaker 1: didn't want people to see me like that.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Seely if I thought I was like if I
Speaker 2: might die, then I don't want people to remember me
Speaker 2: like this almost you know, So I think it was that.
Speaker 2: I think it was when I was at my most vulnerable,
Speaker 2: letting people in on what was happening, and starting to
Speaker 2: slowly share that what part of you still feels like
Speaker 2: it doesn't belong different parts of me in every place
Speaker 2: that I go to. That's interesting. Yeah, and I think
Speaker 2: a lot of people feel like that. Lot of creative
Speaker 2: people feel like that. I've learned to embrace that. Actually,
Speaker 2: I actually feel like having that slight outsiders perspective is
Speaker 2: kind of fun. Yeah, it allows me to enjoy things
Speaker 2: at a distance as well. But yeah, I mean all
Speaker 2: the time. I mean, ah, you know, I remember going
Speaker 2: to meet the Queen and accidentally trying to fist bumper. Ah,
Speaker 2: that's so good.
Speaker 1: It was like a British film industry reception. Everyone lines up.
Speaker 1: She put her hand out like this. From the angle
Speaker 1: that I was at, I thought she was going like this.
Speaker 1: I went like this, as security went like this, ended
Speaker 1: up just going like this.
Speaker 2: You know. It was super weird.
Speaker 1: Yeah, a ring, So I don't know, man, like this
Speaker 1: this is all these kind of moments of feeling like
Speaker 1: a fish out of water that now I actually kind
Speaker 1: of like, I quite enjoy being like, where am I?
Speaker 2: What is this? You know, something you can laugh about later. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it's a better story too, I think so. Yeah, if
Speaker 2: you felt totally comfortable everywhere you went, and you're probably
Speaker 2: not in the right place, David Bowie says, this thing
Speaker 2: of is when you can't feel the bottom of the
Speaker 2: swimming pool. Is you know you're in the right place.
Speaker 2: You know you're slightly out of the depth working it out.
Speaker 2: That's beautiful. I love that. That's one of the reasons
Speaker 2: why I've I actually liked living in LA because I'm
Speaker 2: reminded of my insignificance daily because it's so big, because
Speaker 2: it's so big, and I go to an event and
Speaker 2: I'm the least important person in the room, and I
Speaker 2: love it because the only conversation I'll have is meaningful
Speaker 2: one because the only person who's aware of me is
Speaker 2: someone who's connected to the kind of work I do well,
Speaker 2: and then that allows me to bask in the glory
Speaker 2: of the rarity of that human and the intraction we
Speaker 2: just had. So I tried to belong to one person
Speaker 2: then belong to a room or a place or a space,
Speaker 2: because belonging to one person is kind of all we're
Speaker 2: looking for anyway. It's like when you meet one person
Speaker 2: and you go, oh god, even like you know we're
Speaker 2: from the same area, like you know, we know the
Speaker 2: same people. Like that to me in a busy, big
Speaker 2: room is like pure joy that I know. Even the
Speaker 2: person winning an award on stages you've rightly just said,
Speaker 2: isn't even feeling yeah, And so it's not being celebrated
Speaker 2: that it gives us joy. It's not belonging to a
Speaker 2: whole room that gives us joy. It's connectious. It's one
Speaker 2: person that lives to you, and you go, we're from
Speaker 2: the same place, we believe in the same things, we
Speaker 2: care about whatever whatever that may be. Or I had
Speaker 2: a really good debate with someone that engaged me in
Speaker 2: a really curious way and we don't agree. It can
Speaker 2: be so overwhelming in those rooms, can't it. Where like
Speaker 2: you're chatting to people and you feel that everyone's like
Speaker 2: looking over his should and see if there's someone else
Speaker 2: to talk to, and it's like pinball. It's like a
Speaker 2: social pinball, but finding a center in those rooms, finding
Speaker 2: a kind of a rooted place to drop into. Yeah,
Speaker 2: that's the way to do it. Yeah. I always say
Speaker 2: to God, I'm like, I just want to meet the
Speaker 2: one person you want me to meet today, And that's
Speaker 2: how I walk into a room. I love that. I
Speaker 2: always meet that person and it's always like becomes a friendship,
Speaker 2: or we had a great conversation and we don't talk
Speaker 2: ever again, or and it's just like, yeah, God, like
Speaker 2: I'm here for you. So you just introduced me to
Speaker 2: the one person you want to introduce me to you
Speaker 2: and it Yeah, that that kind of carries me. So
Speaker 2: this one's a good one. So when was the last
Speaker 2: time you tried to people? Please?
Speaker 1: This is going to sound like a small thing, but
Speaker 1: clothes matter to me a lot me too, Man. I
Speaker 1: grew on a Wembley market where they sold all the
Speaker 1: fake designer clothes.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so it's all about that. Would go and buy
Speaker 2: some and we'd sell them and we got you know,
Speaker 2: and try and buy some real ones, and I do
Speaker 2: you know, we were just kind of obsessed with it,
Speaker 2: you know, as teenagers trying to wear the mask or
Speaker 2: having the costume or find worth whatever it is. Now
Speaker 2: I see it more as a kind of expression to myself. Recently,
Speaker 2: I was going to do a talk show or something
Speaker 2: and I said, I shouldn't wear that outfit. That's to
Speaker 2: me in a weird way. I was like, that's I
Speaker 2: need to meet the audience where they're at. Maybe they
Speaker 2: haven't seen a show like this or have related to
Speaker 2: someone like me from my background. I'm doing something maybe targeting,
Speaker 2: like you know, it's Middle America or something. And I
Speaker 2: tried to dilute down what I would wear and who
Speaker 2: I would be, And luckily, when I was wearing things,
Speaker 2: I was like, oh the hell is this what am
Speaker 2: I doing? And I took it off.
Speaker 1: But I remember, and I remember actually in that moment
Speaker 1: being quite surprised, like, Oh, that's still really that's just
Speaker 1: still a really strong instinct to do that, to edit
Speaker 1: and censor myself in that way.
Speaker 2: It sounds like a small thing. But do you think, though,
Speaker 2: you only get away with being able to make that
Speaker 2: choice when you're successful.
Speaker 1: I think chicken and egg. I think the people who
Speaker 1: become the most successful the people who most unapologize themselves.
Speaker 2: I love that. What a great answer, because the specificity
Speaker 2: and the honesty and the authenticity is what people are
Speaker 2: attracted to. Just feels real, you know. That's the narrative again.
Speaker 2: We tell ourselves, Oh, I'm when I'm successful, then I'll
Speaker 2: be myself when people they sent me, I'll be me.
Speaker 2: If you be you, then people will accept you. Yeah. Yea,
Speaker 2: so well said man. So well said, I feel like
Speaker 2: before we go to the final five, which is our
Speaker 2: Rabbi Fire, I feel like we have to give a
Speaker 2: bunch of shout outs to places in north and Northwest
Speaker 2: London there we grew up around because we've got to
Speaker 2: go Niche. We were talking about this before. We were like,
Speaker 2: we could have done a whole interview about north Northwest
Speaker 2: London and no one else would have got us apart
Speaker 2: from our hometown, which we love. So this is for
Speaker 2: the fifteen people that know exactly what we're talking about.
Speaker 2: I'm going to start with the what I said to
Speaker 2: earlier Kebabish on the Healing Road.
Speaker 1: Yeah, barbish is literally a place that I shout out
Speaker 1: on my last rap song.
Speaker 2: Do you know what when I said that to you earlier,
Speaker 2: I didn't even know that.
Speaker 1: Just did the tract will be good with cassies that
Speaker 1: it's on the Bait soundtrack actually I name check Cabarbage specifically,
Speaker 1: and the amount of people from my past who reached
Speaker 1: out and texted me like, bro, barbish.
Speaker 2: You remember those.
Speaker 1: Days when we used to go barbage the garlic. Mao,
Speaker 1: my mouth is watering. Is I'm talking? It's actually the
Speaker 1: non it's the freshness of the non shower barbage eating road. Okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a good one. What about well you Saint and
Speaker 1: or Saint George's. These are two shopping malls in Harrow
Speaker 1: in northwest London. Right whichever one the girl I was
Speaker 1: dating wanted to go to. Yeah, whichever, all right, So
Speaker 1: that's a good one.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I was actually saying again to shout out this area
Speaker 1: in London. Its northwest London. We have all the best jays.
Speaker 1: We have Jay Sean, j Paul and Jayshay. It's the
Speaker 1: Holy Trinity, man, it's the Holy Brown Trinity.
Speaker 2: And then we have Risen de Patel.
Speaker 1: Yes, we're also there holding on a fort Rainer's Lane,
Speaker 1: Sudbury Town. So but it's interesting. It's this kind of
Speaker 1: little pocket corner of the world. There's recuper multicultural, you know.
Speaker 1: Because of that, I think it's like a real creative
Speaker 1: hotbed and you get some interesting stuff happening here.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Anthony Joshua from exactly from what for? Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2: Sitting down with you is like it is sitting down
Speaker 2: with an old friend. Like it feels that way because
Speaker 2: the schools you went to, the people we grow up around,
Speaker 2: friends and family. But Riz, you've been amazing to talk
Speaker 2: to you today. Honestly, this is an absolute honor. This
Speaker 2: is beyond my expectations to get your openness, your honesty,
Speaker 2: your vulnerability. The show Bait is a winner already. Can't
Speaker 2: wait for more people to watch it. I can't wait
Speaker 2: for you. I mean, I know you've got Digger coming
Speaker 2: out this year. You've got you know, Hamlet that's out already,
Speaker 2: Like it's I feel like, you know, just keeps becoming
Speaker 2: more and more your year for actually putting out real expression.
Speaker 2: I appreciate you trying to receive it. There we go,
Speaker 2: h thank you, appreciate you. But we end every interview
Speaker 2: with the final five. These questions have to be answered
Speaker 2: in one sentence maximum. Oh God, here we go. So, Riz,
Speaker 2: these are your final five, brought to you by State Farm.
Speaker 2: The first question is, what is the best advice you've
Speaker 2: ever heard or received. Idris Elba once said to me,
Speaker 2: categorize yourself, not explain.
Speaker 1: I'd hear a glass ceiling in my career in the UK.
Speaker 1: He was like, you should go to America. I'm like, bro,
Speaker 1: well they're gonna do with a guy like me over there.
Speaker 1: You don't do nothing. I'm this, They don't have that,
Speaker 1: they have that. I'm not this anyway. Categorize yourself, not
Speaker 1: my friend. And actually when you do that, you're doing
Speaker 1: other people's work for them. It's about the limitations people
Speaker 1: placed on you, how we internalize them, and then we
Speaker 1: perpetuate that narrative and going I'm this, this is my lane,
Speaker 1: I'm this flavor. There's so many different sides to who
Speaker 1: you are. I told him that recently and he was like,
Speaker 1: I was like, bro, you remember that conversation.
Speaker 2: He was like, nah, don't memory of that. I was like, great,
Speaker 2: thanks well bro.
Speaker 1: But in's those throwaway moments right when people kind of
Speaker 1: like see you differently to how you used to being seen.
Speaker 2: Did you feel that, like, was that hard? I know
Speaker 2: the representation conversations ever played. I know those conversations have
Speaker 2: happened of just like you know, making it as a
Speaker 2: brown man in Hollywood. You've done that, but what is
Speaker 2: the reality of that? Because we say that and then
Speaker 2: you're like, well, wait a minute, Actually, no, I haven't
Speaker 2: done that because I.
Speaker 1: Think that there's a reality that for women, for people
Speaker 1: of color, for people who are differently abled, there is
Speaker 1: a lot more resistance. I definitely do feel like sometimes
Speaker 1: I have to work, you know, twice as hard to
Speaker 1: get half as far. But I'm also kind of starting
Speaker 1: to feel like that gives my journey more meaning to me.
Speaker 1: But I know for a fact also for many others,
Speaker 1: you know, and that actually I think more and more
Speaker 1: friction is what gives life.
Speaker 2: It's meaning.
Speaker 1: You know, you order mean on delivery, it does not
Speaker 1: taste the same as you've taken that time to cook
Speaker 1: that for yourself, shout delivery. I'm not saying that I
Speaker 1: don't do that, but I'm just kind of like, I
Speaker 1: just feel like it's what's given my journey. It's it's
Speaker 1: meaning for me and I know for others, So I
Speaker 1: wouldn't change it. I think for long time i'd say
Speaker 1: I wish I could swap that out, wish I could
Speaker 1: make that different, But I don't feel that way anymore.
Speaker 2: What advice would you give to someone who is a
Speaker 2: person of color, differently abled, who is a woman agenda
Speaker 2: that may have any of these experiences, what would you
Speaker 2: say to them? Because I think the bitterness, the pain,
Speaker 2: the rejection real is real. It's real, it's justified, it's
Speaker 2: not imagined. I don't want to gas like anyone who's
Speaker 2: going through that. It's hard. I would say, you know,
Speaker 2: my experience is like the gift and the curse are
Speaker 2: usually the same thing. You Losing your voice has made
Speaker 2: you so conscious of what you're communicating and how and
Speaker 2: the words you're choosing. There's so many examples I can
Speaker 2: think of in my own journey where the thing that
Speaker 2: I thought was blocking me, if I just leaned into it,
Speaker 2: it could unlock something. And I would say to all
Speaker 2: of those people, the thing about you is different is
Speaker 2: an obstacle in certain ways, but it's also the key,
Speaker 2: and I would say, lean into the specificity of your
Speaker 2: experience of who you are. You know, I went to
Speaker 2: Oxford University and felt very out of place there on
Speaker 2: many different levels. And my experience there taught me something,
Speaker 2: which is actually because I was thinking about quitting after
Speaker 2: the first month, I was like what the hell am
Speaker 2: I doing here? Kind of had a mental health kind
Speaker 2: of breakdown almost over there and felt super depressed, super
Speaker 2: kind of like an alien. But I kind of feel
Speaker 2: like now, the place where you stick out if you can,
Speaker 2: if you can find a support, if it doesn't hurt you,
Speaker 2: the place that you stick out is a place where
Speaker 2: you should kind of stick it out. You have an
Speaker 2: opportunity of changing the temperature in that room, of bringing
Speaker 2: other people into that room. I love that, man. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it reminds me of the stoic statement of the obstacle
Speaker 2: is the way, oh right, idea of like the obstacle
Speaker 2: is the way. There is no other way, and so
Speaker 2: that obstacle, whether it's how you set up, or your
Speaker 2: background or your uniqueness. Yeah, all right. The question number two,
Speaker 2: what is the worst advice you've ever heard or received?
Speaker 2: It was one of the first casting directors I ever met, said, hey,
Speaker 2: nice to me. Just be careful about your eyes. You
Speaker 2: can look at a bit of a psychopath. Sometimes because
Speaker 2: I do this, I get excited and I start going
Speaker 2: to this. I want to watch this interview back. I
Speaker 2: did it there.
Speaker 1: I sometimes this my wife, Am I doing the crazy eyes?
Speaker 1: She goes stop think, don't think about the crazy eyes. Okay,
Speaker 1: but it just made me very self conscious and actually weirdly,
Speaker 1: I remember for a couple of years after that, I
Speaker 1: was acting like this and everything. Go and watch some
Speaker 1: of my stuff from like the early odds bro. I'm like,
Speaker 1: that's brilliant, very good. I have big eyes, I can be,
Speaker 1: I get animated. It's I've got to, you know, learn
Speaker 1: to try and lean into that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I love that. Question Number three, you mentioned
Speaker 2: your wife a few times. What's been the biggest lesson
Speaker 2: that you've learned from your wife? When I see the
Speaker 2: path that my wife has been on, how she's had
Speaker 2: to fight every step of the way, the dedication, the
Speaker 2: devotion it has taken for her to tell her story
Speaker 2: with such specificity and reach the world with it, I
Speaker 2: think I've kind of understood what devotion means. Devotion to
Speaker 2: her path, her creativity is a kind of prayer, is
Speaker 2: a kind of devotion. Devotion, and seeing how she is
Speaker 2: with our child, I think she just operates from like
Speaker 2: a deep place, you know. I think the biggest thing
Speaker 2: she's taught me that And also, you can never buy
Speaker 2: enough phone charges. She will take them all and lose
Speaker 2: them all, you know, they say, is the way that
Speaker 2: the first thing about someone that you find cute ends
Speaker 2: up being the thing that's like kill me.
Speaker 1: Now. We actually met because she had lost her phone charge. No,
Speaker 1: I was in a cafe in New York a laptop charger.
Speaker 1: I was in a cafe in New York, just writing
Speaker 1: a script or whatever. She came in on the phone
Speaker 1: laptops only on the communal table. She sits down opposite me,
Speaker 1: pulls out her laptop, starts emptying out her bag looking
Speaker 1: for her charger. It's like chaos, And I was like,
Speaker 1: can I help you? Do you want to borrow my charger?
Speaker 1: After six years of marriage, Bro, that hasn't changed. She's
Speaker 1: still borrowing my charger.
Speaker 2: Now. I'm trying to hide the charger from her. Did
Speaker 2: she know? She was like, no, No, I might have
Speaker 2: thought that maybe for a minute. Now that I know her,
Speaker 2: I just know it's like a vortex of chargers. No.
Speaker 1: But I'm just kind of trying to downplay it and
Speaker 1: choke around. But I think, you know what my wife
Speaker 1: has taught me so much. But the word that comes
Speaker 1: to my mind is devotion, devotion to a purpose, to
Speaker 1: a journey, yeah, to your path.
Speaker 2: I love that, man. Beautiful answer question number four, what
Speaker 2: do you pray to God for today?
Speaker 1: I went to Mecca recently, and you do this thing
Speaker 1: where you kind of try and pray for everyone you
Speaker 1: know by name, and I started realizing that everything ends
Speaker 1: up kind of cohering around like three basic ideas.
Speaker 2: I pray for people's health. I pray for people's ability
Speaker 2: to provide for themselves and their loved ones in a
Speaker 2: way that allows them to have dignity and feel good
Speaker 2: about it. And the third thing that I always pray
Speaker 2: for everyone is for them to be brought closer to
Speaker 2: their purpose. And I say, God, bring me close to
Speaker 2: my purpose, because that's the way of bringing me closer
Speaker 2: to myself as you intend, and also closer to you
Speaker 2: your purpose. I think your path is something that is
Speaker 2: extremely personal but also divine, and so alignment to our
Speaker 2: path to our purpose. There's this phrase in Islam that
Speaker 2: set out delmustrine, which is the straight path, and people
Speaker 2: interpret that in different ways, but for me, it's about
Speaker 2: finding your path, the path that's intended for you. So yeah, man,
Speaker 2: your health, your rosie rot, your ability to provide, and
Speaker 2: your path. Have you been in Mecca before is that
Speaker 2: the first time.
Speaker 1: No. I went once when I was fifteen, but it
Speaker 1: was a different experience. I went older and actually from
Speaker 1: a more spiritually skeptical place. You know how life throws
Speaker 1: you around and you kind of ask questions. And we
Speaker 1: went this December, and both me and my wife were
Speaker 1: when with openness, and I would say, you know, we
Speaker 1: are Muslim and we have spirituality in our lives, but
Speaker 1: we also feel often the organized religion and a way
Speaker 1: that it's used is definitely brought some skepticism into our
Speaker 1: hearts as well. And going there was incredible, and I
Speaker 1: would say it was actually just a physical act of
Speaker 1: walking around in a circle with all these people from
Speaker 1: all over the world, everyone dressed the same, everyone's mask
Speaker 1: kind of stripped away. There's just such a sense of
Speaker 1: oneness there. It was really kind of beautiful, and I
Speaker 1: promised myself I got try and bor all this feeling.
Speaker 1: But of course, as soon as you're on that plane,
Speaker 1: you're like back on your phone.
Speaker 2: But that was it was powerful. Yeah, it's interesting as
Speaker 2: you were talking about that, because I've been thinking about
Speaker 2: this idea a lot, about how modern society has made
Speaker 2: everything about upwards and forwards, and actually when you look
Speaker 2: at spiritual traditions, everything's circumamulating, beautiful, and even in India,
Speaker 2: when you go to a holy place, you you circle it,
Speaker 2: or in a wedding when you go there, everything circlear.
Speaker 2: And so when you start looking at life that way
Speaker 2: versus that way, I love it. It's just a fascinating
Speaker 2: like mindset shift of like, oh, what if we saw
Speaker 2: life as cyclical and not as linear and everything we
Speaker 2: just talked about today.
Speaker 1: I love what you're saying. I think of it as
Speaker 1: a spiral. A spiral, yeah, yeah, yeah, because you kind
Speaker 1: of retread the same ground in life, but hopefully from
Speaker 1: a more elevated perspective each time. I like that, you know,
Speaker 1: and epiphany kind of works in that way as well.
Speaker 1: And those leaps that you have of understanding, they're usually
Speaker 1: kind of not by going to it, by retracing your steps, yeah,
Speaker 1: and feeling different or wanting something to feel different.
Speaker 2: I like the ascension aspect that you just added. That's
Speaker 2: not just round and around and around. It's sure, so
Speaker 2: there is some ascension which is which is beautiful. Fifth
Speaker 2: and final question we asked this every guest who's ever
Speaker 2: been on the show I'm really excited for your answer.
Speaker 2: You can think about it for as long as you want.
Speaker 2: If you could create one law that everyone in the
Speaker 2: world had to follow, what would it be. I want
Speaker 2: to be off my phone more, but we're all locked
Speaker 2: in because everyone's on their phone. I'll put it down
Speaker 2: if everyone else does. I just want everyone to be
Speaker 2: off their phone, everyone to go back to dumb phones.
Speaker 2: And here's why.
Speaker 1: I go through periods of time where I put my
Speaker 1: phone away totally. I put it in a little safe
Speaker 1: and I lock it away for like twelve hours or
Speaker 1: twenty hours or you know, before we had a kid,
Speaker 1: me and my wife would go away and she as
Speaker 1: a novelist. She has to do that kind of deep work.
Speaker 1: You know, you can't kind of dip in and out
Speaker 1: of it the way she does, at least she can't,
Speaker 1: And so the phone would go away for like five days.
Speaker 1: We'd like check into our hotel, give it to them
Speaker 1: and say we'll take this mom and check out. Time
Speaker 1: feels totally different. My experience of the day feels totally different.
Speaker 1: The thoughts in my mind are totally different. I'm a
Speaker 1: little bit closer to being obsessed with the velcrobe on
Speaker 1: the shoe again.
Speaker 2: You know what I mean. I would love to just
Speaker 2: do that.
Speaker 1: I don't know what that means about this show though, Okay,
Speaker 1: who gets to see it. Maybe we'll have certain just
Speaker 1: certain hours in the day we can all go back.
Speaker 2: That's answer. I love it. I feel like that's that's
Speaker 2: atle risamored, bait, excited for everything that comes from this day.
Speaker 2: I hope we stay in touch. Yeah, it must have
Speaker 2: been such a joy to do this with you, and
Speaker 2: I hope you felt you got to share everything and
Speaker 2: anything you wanted to talk. Absolutely, and thank you for
Speaker 2: creating the space for me and for other people. It's
Speaker 2: a very enriching space and empowering one where we can
Speaker 2: just be vulnerable in that way and share. So thank you,
Speaker 2: thank you, thank you. If you're feeling inspired by this episode,
Speaker 2: you won't want to miss my conversation with Wicked's Cynthia Arrivo.
Speaker 2: We are afraid to let a person go, and we
Speaker 2: need to be okay with things people go.
Speaker 1: We don't know what path people are walking on when
Speaker 1: they walk into our lives. We might just be a
Speaker 1: stepping stone in their path, just like stepping stones in
Speaker 1: their life