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Riz Ahmed Is Trying to Tim Allen His Way Into History

In the latest episode of VICE Culture Club, the Oscar winner talks about ten years of fighting to make Hamlet, getting his first rap song banned, and why compliments stopped working on him a long time ago.

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Riz Ahmed—Oscar winner, rapper, and the star of Rogue One and The Night Of—is doing a lot right now, and he knows it. A film, a TV show, new music—all dropping in the same window. The first real question from host Jackson Garrett: “Are you trying to Tim Allen?” Ahmed doesn’t flinch. “I gotta catch up with Tim,” he says, referencing Allen’s legendary trifecta of simultaneous number ones. “This time we’re going to figure this out.”

The Tim Allen bit is funny, but it isn’t a joke. Ahmed has been grinding toward this moment for years. Hamlet, his new film in which he stars as the first non-white Hamlet in cinematic history, took roughly ten years to develop and another five to actually make. He wanted it out earlier. He’ll tell you that himself. But he’s also come around to the idea that timing is........

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