Riz Ahmed admits losing 22lbs for Mogul Mowgli was 'intense'

7 September 2021

Riz Ahmed admitted his weight loss for 'Mogul Mowgli' was extremely "intense".

Riz Ahmed

The 38-year-old star lost 22lbs in just three weeks to play Zed in the new movie, which follows a rapper who is diagnosed with an autoimmune disease which halts his plans for stardom.

Riz told IndieWire: "I lost 10 kilos [about 22 pounds] in three weeks. I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone.

"I had a professional dietician working with me, but it was really gruelling and took me emotionally to an intense place, which probably informed the movie.

"That was a big part of it, being in a place of weakness and fatigue and insatiable hunger."

Although getting into the required shape for the movie was demanding, Riz recalled something he heard Daniel Kaluuya say while publicising 'Judas and the Black Messiah'.

He explained: "Dan Kaluuya said something I liked: ‘If you’re in your head, you’re dead.’ I think that’s true.

"Acting has to be in your body. Anything that brings you into your body centres you, and you can perform in that place.”

Meanwhile, Riz - who became the first Muslim to be nominated for the Best Actor gong at the Oscars earlier this year for his performance in 'Sound of Metal' - launched a fund to counter "toxic portrayals" of Muslims in movies.

Back in JUne, he said: "I simultaneously wore that slightly dubious accolade with a sense of gratitude personally ... I also felt tremendous sadness.

"How was it that out of 1.6 billion people - a quarter of the world's population - none of us had ever been in this position until now?

"I asked myself, if I'm the exception to the rule, what must the rule be about people like me? What must the unwritten rule be about Muslims - a quarter of the world's population - and their place in our stories, our culture and their place in our society, if any?"

The new Blueprint for Muslim Inclusion scheme will include funding and mentoring for Muslim storytellers.

The project was launched after a study by the Annenberg Inclusion Initiative, titled Missing and Maligned, discovered that a speaking Muslim character featured in fewer than 10 percent of top-grossing movies between 2017 and 2019 in the UK, US and Australia.