Actor says viewers from minority backgrounds are switching off and turning to terrorism propaganda films which make recruits look like James Bond
Actor Riz Ahmed has warned that a lack of diversity on TV is alienating young people.
Hannah Ellis-Petersen Thursday 2 March 2017 12.17 EST
Actor and rapper Riz Ahmed has warned that the enduring failure to champion diversity on TV is alienating young people, driving them towards extremism and into the arms of Isis.
Ahmed, known for his roles in Four Lions and the the Star Wars prequel Rogue One,
Personally, I saw both of those movies, along with Nightcrawler in which he plays some kind of pseud0-Chicano, and this guy made zero impression on me. I had forgotten he existed.
said the lack of diverse voices and stories onscreen led people from minority backgrounds to “switch off and retreat to fringe narratives, to bubbles online and sometimes even off to Syria”.
Delivering Channel 4’s annual diversity lecture in Parliament, Ahmed said that in the light of the rise in racial and religious hate crimes post-Brexit, TV had a pivotal role to play in ensuring different communities felt heard, and valued, in British society.
“If we fail to represent, we are in danger of losing people to extremism,” he said.
“In the mind of the Isis recruit, he’s the next James Bond right? Have you seen some of those Isis propaganda videos, they are cut like action movies. Where is the counter narrative? Where are we telling these kids they can be heroes in our stories, that they valued?”
Ahmed’s recent roles include the HBO drama The Night Of and comedy series Girls, both American TV shows.
I, Riz Ahmed, am almost as asymmetrically funny-looking as Adam Driver is, and we were both on Girls.
Yet he gets to play Darth Vader Jr. in Star Wars movies, while I’m stuck playing Bodhi Rook.
I ask you: is that fair?
Like Idris Elba, who delivered the lecture last year, Ahmed used the platform to criticise the fact he still had to go to the US to land major parts.
Trust me, I really wanted to spend my entire life doing Coronation Street and appearing at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival and living in a fourth floor walk-up flat. But instead I had to go to Hollywood to be in a Star Wars movie.
Because you are racist and I hate you.
“It takes American remakes of British shows to cast someone like me,” he said. “We end up going to America to find work. I meet with producers and directors here and they say ‘we don’t have anything for you, all our stories are set in Cornwall in the 1600s’.”
That bastard Shakespeare.
Ahmed said British television still perceived diversity as a “frill or an added extra” and that if it is not addressed immediately, it would create more divisions across the country.
Immediately!
… He added: “If we don’t step up and tell a representative story … we are going to start losing British teenagers to the story that the next chapter in their lives is written with Isis in Syria.” …
Ahmed called on the government to act, particularly to overturn the unconscious bias in hiring that was preventing talented people from black, Asian and minority backgrounds rising up the ranks. He said public money should be tied to representation targets for broadcasters to break the cycle of top jobs going mainly to white men.
Look how Daniel Day-Lewis gets all the good roles.
He’s always going on about how he was a discriminated-against Irishman.
Actor says viewers from minority backgrounds are switching off and turning to terrorism propaganda films which make recruits look like James Bond
