Riz Ahmed talks turning Bait's chilling hate crime scene into the surreal: 'It's about internalised racism and prejudice'

**Warning: This article contains spoilers for Bait.**

As the world starts closing in on Shah Latif (Riz Ahmed) in Prime Video's Bait, things start to go from ordinary to slightly surreal as the struggling actor has to deal with being thrown into the spotlight.

Having engineered a studio exit to be captured by paparazzi so the James Bond rumour mill could involve him, Shah is taken aback as he realises that not everyone is pleased at the prospect of him being the new 007.

While his family and friends may be over the moon for him, he soon sees online vitriol being thrown his way, with plenty of racism and Islamophobia sadly piled on.

Part of those scenes involves a pig's head being thrown through the window of his parents' home, a chilling hate crime in amongst all of the laughter of the series.

But we soon see that Shah is actually using the pig's head in another way – talking to it as though he's on a podcast.

Chatting to Radio Times about where the idea came from for the pig's head – voiced by Sir Patrick Stewart – series creator and star Ahmed revealed: “I knew that a character that needed to be in this was Shah’s critical voice – and we all have it, all of us.

"I thought ‘Well, how do we dramatise it?’ Of course, when we got to that, there was a discovery in the room. When we got to the pig’s head at the end of episode 1, it was literally staring at us in the face.

"So often, our own critical voice is about the internalised criticism, racism, hate and prejudice that we’ve taken from other people telling us we’re not good enough. But the thing I really wanted to help portray is that often, we sometimes have a very codependent relationship with that critical voice.

"For years, it was my self-criticism that would motivate me more than joy or love. I wanted to show that actually, that self-criticism, it can be a double-edged sword. It can spur you to great ambition – but at what cost?”

As we see in the series, Shah locks himself away in his parents' garage to chat to the pig's head in question and eventually starts to lean on it for some sort of direction and advice, as his life begins to spiral out of control.

The series may draw on Bond as a storytelling device, but the show is all about identity and public vs personal personas, as well as how those can impact our sense of self and those around us. It also impacts Shah's relationship with his cousin Zulfi, played by Guz Khan.

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Bait took Ahmed 12 years to develop and speaking about what was most important to nail in the series, Ahmed told Radio Times: “What I wanted to get right was the relationships and the characters. For that, I needed amazing actors. I needed Guz, there was only one person who could play Zulfi.

"I actually almost knew that if Guz doesn’t play Zulfi, the show would not work. He is the core of authenticity and represents a person that’s... Shah is not at ease with himself in the way that Zulfi is. I needed someone who’s fully at ease with himself – only a man at ease with himself can wear these orange glasses! And so, I needed him in the mix for that.”

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