Riz Ahmed on turning Bait’s chilling hate crime scene into the surreal
**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 …
