The idea of taking on the Shakespearean tragedy is something Academy Award winner Riz Ahmed has been mulling on for a while.
Filled with drama, grief and conflict, Riz felt William Shakespeare’s play, which follows Prince Hamlet as he seeks revenge against his uncle who seized the Danish throne and married Hamlet’s, mother was a very universal story.
Swapping Denmark for modern Britain and a rich white family for wealthy Asian one, Riz, who plays Hamlet, says the play spoke to him as a member of the British Pakistani community.
“It is a well-established cultural tradition in my community – if a man dies and his brother is unmarried, then to help protect the family, the surviving brother marries his sister-in-law. Also, the idea that people’s dead relatives and their spirits are unable to rest until certain debts are repaid or things are put to right. It felt like the play was written for me. These classical Western myths, were something that I could relate to and find myself in.”
Riz, who won the 2022 Academy Award for Best Live Action Short Film for “The Long Goodbye,” will reunite with director Aneil Karia for the film.
“Hamlet” which also stars Morfydd Clark, Joe Alwyn, Sheeba Chadha, Avijit Dutt (Raid 2), Art Malik and Timothy Spall releases in theaters on April 10.
