In Dan Gilroy’s 2014 thriller, Nightcrawler, Jake Gyllenhaal’s ambitious cameraman Lou Bloom is a predator, and Riz Ahmed’s Rick — an unhoused, in-denial sex worker who agrees to be Lou’s low-paid assistant — is his prey. Rick is not the only person Lou is manipulating: There’s also Rene Russo’s news director and Bill Paxton’s competing stringer, both of whom suffer because of their relationships with him. But Ahmed gives the young, impressionable Rick such vulnerability that his eventual murder feels like Nightcrawler’s greatest transgression.
Prior to making the film, Ahmed had already established himself as a rapper and actor in the U.K. His 2006 song “Post 9/11 Blues,” about the perils of being a brown man after the September 11 attacks, went viral, and he’d impressed critics with his work in the 2006 docudrama The Road to Guantánamo, the 2010 terrorism satire Four Lions, and Mira Nair’s 2012 adaptation of Mohsin Hamid’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist. Nearly all of that work touched on his Pakistani heritage and Muslim faith. Then came Nightcrawler, which was a step outside of what can be the representation trap. The role makes no mention of Ahmed’s ethnicity, instead allowing the actor to dig into a character whose devastating arc centers his fear of Lou and mixed feelings about their work. Ahmed displays a combination of fragility and steeliness that would define his career to come, in everything from the HBO miniseries The Night Of to his Oscar-nominated starring work in Sound of Metal to his upcoming role as an ally to whistleblowers in David Mackenzie’s Relay, in theaters August 22.
In the latest edition of our series “Role Call,” Ahmed recalled how Gilroy’s invitation to audition for Nightcrawler provided an opportunity to “bet on himself” — and then provided him with an uncommon view of Los Angeles. “It was surreal. It was seeing the city in a very different way,” says Ahmed of the production’s night shoots and vampiric mood. “My first exposure to L.A. was this nocturnal, accident-chasing, crime-chasing experience — it was pretty intense. Dark in some ways, but also weirdly fascinating. It’s got a kind of dark-alley-in-Wonderland, down-the-rabbit-hole feel to it.”