Riz Ahmed revealed he was hospitalized for an “intense” and “prolonged” illness amid filming for Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, the reality of which eventually led him to connect with the script for 2019’s Sound of Metal.
“Around the time of taking on Sound of Metal, I had had a very intense kind of health-related experience myself, where I had to grapple with the grief but also the acceptance around that,” he said in a new interview on Penn Badgley’s co-hosted Podcrushed podcast. “And basically, I was in the middle of filming Star Wars, and my body just kind of, like, gave up on me. I was extremely exhausted, I was hospitalized for a brief period. I had to really try to recreate my strength. It was like building myself up from scratch. It was super scary and intense and quite prolonged, actually.”
Noting that he wasn’t “getting better quickly” after the onset of the “sudden” illness, he said, “And for a minute, I was like, ‘Am I ever going to get my life back?’ It really wasn’t clear.” He described the dueling experience as a “deep kind of grief and fear and terror and, yet, also a kind of tremendous liberation and gratitude and acceptance.”
The Emmy and Oscar winner explained, “I always think that when you’re brought to your knees, you’re halfway towards praying. When you’re kind of humbled in that way, when something is taken away from you, you become even more acutely aware of everything you have — and on a bodily level, on a health level, you realize, like, you don’t control anything, man. You don’t control a single thing. You don’t even control your body.”
As a result, he said in a moment of “trippy clarity and in the darkness,” he realized “everything you have is a gift.” He continued, “In the most strange way, I never felt more grateful, more at peace, more content than when I felt like I was going to lose my whole life.”
Inadvertently, Ahmed’s health issues resulted in him resonating with the screenplay for Sound of Metal, for which he received an Academy Award nomination for portraying a drummer grappling with the reality of losing his hearing. “When I read the script, I was like, ‘I know what this is, you know, and I need to tell this story,’” Ahmed said. “I need to tell this story for me. I need to make sense of this. And I think that’s one of the greatest privileges that we get as storytellers … the story you need finds you at the right time.”
The Night Of alum can currently be seen in Relay, opposite Lily James, which is currently playing in theaters. The actor is currently at the Telluride Film Festival for Hamlet, a modern reimagining of the seminal William Shakespeare play set in London, which will have its world premiere tomorrow.
Watch the full podcast episode below:
This article was published by Natalie Oganesyan on 2025-08-29 23:10:00
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