Riz Ahmed has reassessed his life following a "health obstacle".
Riz Ahmed/ Photo courtesy of Esquire UK
The 37-year-old musician and actor admitted his new movie, 'Mogul Mowgli' - in which he plays a rapper who is suddenly struck with an autoimmune condition - was inspired by events in his own life that forced him to confront his own mortality.
Speaking at Esquire UK’s virtual event, Esquire Townhouse @ Your House with Breitling, he said: "“I had a health obstacle that I had to overcome and that’s partly what the Mogul Mowgli story draws from, it draws directly from the experience. And in a way it was my own little personal Corona[virus]: a workaholic artist, a health crisis forces you to go into a kind of lockdown, sit with yourself, think about what really matters, and face your mortality. Realise that actually we’re all just a link in the chain.
Riz sadly lost two family members to coronavirus, and he believes the government need to honour those who lost their lives when making decisions on how society can move forward.
He said: “We lost two close family members. That was difficult, but I think it’s an experience a lot of people have gone through right now.
"And when we talk about things going back to normal, nothing’s going to bring those people back and the idea that their deaths might be in vain is hard to stomach for a lot of people.
"And it shouldn’t be in vain, it should be a wake-up call to us about how we run our society, what we value.
"Do we value getting the economy going and paying people to go to restaurants when we know that it can cause another spike, or do we value human life? How are we measuring our success as a society, is it GDP or is it wellbeing?”
For more from Riz, visit https://www.esquire.com/uk/culture/a34370011/watch-riz-ahmed-esquire-townhouse-2020/
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