0:14

Pushkin. I

0:29

just kind of felt the tears on my face and I was like, what the

0:31

hell is going on? That's what it's light.

0:33

When you really communicate with sign language, you'll

0:35

communicate with your whole body. That's

0:37

a totally different kind of communication than,

0:41

you know, the transaction of just

0:43

words. That's riz Acmanon.

0:46

He was nominated for an OSCAR for his performance

0:48

in the movie Sound of Metal. In

0:50

the film, he plays a musician who loses

0:52

his hearing, and he says playing the

0:54

part changed how he moves about in this world.

0:57

In his latest film, Mogul Mowgli, riz

1:00

plays a character based on his own life, and

1:02

he says that role changed how he sees

1:05

himself. I realized

1:07

that up until his point as

1:09

an actor, I'd become adept to molding

1:12

masks and

1:14

wearing them for other people and

1:17

representing other people, and representing

1:20

for other people a community or whatever.

1:22

And I realized that actually, the next stage

1:25

of growth is about not molding

1:27

and wearing masks, but taking them off. In

1:32

this episode, what happens when an actor

1:34

takes the mask off and learns how

1:36

to play himself. I'm

1:40

doctor Maya Schunker, a cognitive scientist

1:42

who studies how and why we change. This

1:45

is a slight change of plans, a show

1:47

about who we are and who we become

1:49

in the face of a big change.

1:57

You know. Typically a slight change of plans focuses

2:00

on how people have navigated extraordinary

2:03

change in their personal lives and what that's

2:05

taught them about who they are in their identity

2:07

and how they've shifted perspectives

2:09

as a result of this big change. With

2:12

your interview in particular, I'm flipping it

2:14

a bit, which is, you're obviously a highly

2:16

skilled actor, and I want

2:18

to hear how embodying distinct

2:21

roles in your career has changed you in

2:23

some ways, right, your understanding of

2:25

the world, the world around you, because

2:28

I imagine that sometimes the best

2:30

way to learn about who we are is to

2:32

see undiscovered parts of

2:34

ourselves reflected in the characters that

2:36

we play, right, absolutely, That sounds amazing.

2:39

Well, thank you. So to

2:41

start off it sounded metal. Do you mind for listeners

2:43

who haven't seen the film, can you just give a quick

2:45

synopsis? Yeah?

2:48

Sure so. Sound of Metal is

2:50

the story of Rubin and Lou.

2:53

There are a couple, they live on the road. They're in

2:55

a band together they live together, so it's

2:57

kind of them against the world in their little cocoon.

3:00

And you know, all of a sudden

3:02

rubin the drama and the

3:04

producer of this duo loses

3:08

his hearing. It's a sudden

3:10

onset hearing loss. And

3:14

what ends up happening is he

3:16

questions his place in the

3:18

world, his place in the relationship, his worth

3:20

and value in the band, and inevitably

3:23

it triggers some of his issues

3:26

with addiction, and so

3:30

his entire life is derailed.

3:32

And yet in that process

3:35

of relinquishing all

3:37

those roles and identities that he used

3:39

to define himself through, he actually kind of finds

3:41

himself and connects

3:43

to a part of himself that he didn't

3:45

know was there, that he didn't know he needed to. It's

3:49

beautiful and curious.

3:52

What did you learn about the deaf community by

3:54

immersing yourself in it for this role? So

3:57

so much? I mean, I thought

4:00

I just signed up to learn American

4:02

sign language and learn how to play the drums, But what

4:04

I learned was so so much more. I

4:06

feel like the deaf community taught me the meaning of

4:09

the word communication. I

4:11

feel like the deaf community taught me what listening

4:14

really is Listening isn't something you just do with your

4:16

ears. It's something you do with your entire body,

4:18

with your energy,

4:22

by holding space for someone else with your attention.

4:25

You know, it's an act of love listening, and

4:28

it's something that is it's an all body

4:30

activity. And

4:33

similarly with communication, you know, I kind

4:35

of found myself getting far

4:37

more emotional talking about you

4:40

know, certain topics and sign language than I would or

4:42

if I if I had the mask of words to hide

4:44

behind. I think of Jeremy Stone,

4:47

my sign instructor, who told me that

4:49

there's this trope in the deaf community

4:51

that hearing people are emotionally repressed

4:54

because they hide behind words, and

4:56

the deaf community is so much about communication

4:59

and embodied communication rather

5:01

than physiological listening. That yeah,

5:05

it really kind of worked me up to what those words really mean. You

5:09

give an example of how that expressed itself

5:11

in you. Yes,

5:14

So one example is, you know,

5:17

Jeremy and I would meet up every day to him

5:19

to teach me sign language for a couple of hours

5:21

every morning for about seven months. And over

5:23

that period of time, you know, you quickly move past

5:26

you know, grammar and vocabulary and

5:29

your starts becoming each other's therapists and

5:31

each other's kind of best buddies. And

5:33

I remember it was a moment we were just both talking about

5:36

our lives, really our experiences, talking

5:40

actually about how they might have overlapped

5:42

with the characters of Ruben, that the idea of

5:44

kind of feeling like an outsider, always

5:47

looking for that place that you might belong and finding

5:50

that you didn't, so having to create your own place and belonging.

5:54

And I think we were just talking about high school,

5:57

you know, and our experiences, and it couldn't have

5:59

been more different. You grew up, you know, Afro

6:02

Latin in Harlem, a deaf

6:04

kid in a hearing school, you know, I grew

6:06

up British Pakistani working class in

6:08

a push white private school in the suburbs.

6:11

But there was just some overlap and we were

6:13

just talking and HAS found myself welling

6:15

up and I

6:19

just kind of felt the tears on my face and I was like, what the

6:21

hell is going on? And he kind

6:23

of that's when he stopped me and said, that's

6:27

that's what it's light. When you really communicate with sign

6:29

language, you're communicate with your whole body. Your

6:31

body's reliving the experience and you're transmitting

6:33

that to me with your energy. That's

6:35

a totally different kind of communication than,

6:39

you know, the transaction

6:41

of just words. Yeah, it's

6:43

so interesting you say this. I

6:45

know we're both We were both at Oxford at various

6:47

points, and my thesis was

6:49

about multisensory perception and the

6:51

fact that it doesn't make sense to study

6:54

the senses and isolation. What we

6:56

see can affect what we hear, what we taste

6:58

can affect what we touch, And

7:00

my research was on how our

7:02

high level expectations of the world infiltrate

7:05

all of our sensory perception. Right, The

7:07

attitudes and beliefs that we bring to the table affect

7:09

everything, and so we sometimes can

7:12

feel like we're passive recipients

7:14

of sensory inputs, but actually

7:16

the emotions that we have, the belief systems

7:18

we carry, they inform

7:21

that sensory perception in critical ways. Right, it's

7:23

a bidirectional route. Absolutely. Well,

7:25

it's fascinating. So the idea that there's

7:28

no yeah, objective

7:30

perception. Yeah, that's exactly right.

7:32

Yeah, we're kind of yeah,

7:34

character baggage history,

7:37

you know, backstory, if you will. In

7:40

acting parlance, that's those are

7:42

the goggles that you're viewing the world

7:44

through exactly. You

7:46

know, there's this poignant moment when Reuben

7:49

is at the doctor's office because he's just

7:51

had profound hearing loss, and he

7:54

naively assumes that there has to be a solution

7:56

to his plight, right, he resists any implication

8:00

that the road ahead will be far

8:02

more complex. I see that. So what can

8:06

we do about it? How do I get it back? Well,

8:10

you have to understand something here.

8:13

Whether or not this is related to

8:16

your exposure to noise or

8:19

it's an autoimmune issue, doesn't

8:22

really matter. I understand I've got a problem.

8:25

I'm asking you what I could do about it. You

8:27

know, I think so many of us in our lives experience

8:30

this kind of denial in the face

8:32

of an unwanted change. You know. It's

8:34

so it's such a relatable moment, and so I

8:37

was curious to know whether you've

8:39

also had that kind of instinct at moments in

8:41

your life where you've been you've

8:44

either been at a crossroads, you've experienced unwanted

8:46

change, where you're just hoping for

8:49

that simple answer, that's simple fix. I

8:51

think, in smaller ways, almost every

8:53

day I find myself, you

8:56

know, trying to look for simplistic solutions

8:59

rather than the complex, embracing the complexity

9:01

of acceptance, you

9:03

know, and it's

9:07

it's a it's a daily practice, is

9:09

right, you know. Surrender and

9:11

submission and an acceptance is something

9:13

that is actually comes up in the film a lot

9:16

Um. You know, the idea of the addict

9:18

looking for a fix, as in a hit of drugs, it's

9:21

also the addict looking for a fix a

9:23

way of you know, um,

9:26

making things feel better. You know.

9:28

If that's what the hit of drugs do, that's

9:31

what the hit of dopamine does. That's what

9:34

um, the adrenaline does for the workaholic,

9:36

you know, like myself, or that's also

9:39

um, you know, papering

9:42

over the cracks with some some kind of

9:44

illusion of solving. Um.

9:48

Yeah, it's it makes things feel

9:50

better, but it's but it's not engaging

9:53

with the world as it is. And

9:55

yeah, I'm constantly

9:58

in that place, I mean saying all the things that I struggle

10:00

with, like terrible

10:04

surrendering, Oh my gosh. I mean one

10:06

thing I found so much resonance in Reuben's story

10:09

because a quick personal aside, which is I

10:11

was a concert violetist as a kid and

10:14

a sudden acute injury

10:16

in my hand derailed my musical

10:18

career, and it was so clear to everyone

10:21

Riz other than me, that my journey

10:23

was over and slowly

10:25

over the years. And

10:28

I think this touches on some of the themes in

10:30

Sound of Metal and in Mogil Mogley you

10:32

have to figure out who you are outside

10:35

of that one pursuit. It calls

10:37

into question this very natural

10:39

question we all ask ourselves, which is who are

10:41

we right? You know, in cognitive

10:43

science there's this term called identity

10:45

foreclosure, and it does refer to the idea

10:48

that we can feel very fixed

10:50

in our sense of selves, especially

10:52

early in adolescence, and that identity

10:55

prevents us from exploring other

10:57

alternatives, other avenues, other

10:59

identities that we can embody. And so, you

11:02

know, I think if you had asked me as a young kid, what do you love about

11:04

the violin? I would have said, well, I love how it feels,

11:06

I love how it sounds. Actually what I

11:08

love of Riz And maybe you can relate to this as an

11:10

actor, as I could get onto

11:13

a stage in front of thousands

11:15

of strangers and within moments

11:18

I could make them feel something that they

11:20

had never felt before. And that

11:22

was so intoxicating and so powerful

11:24

that when I realized, well,

11:26

this is a trait of music that made

11:28

me happy, I might have lost the violin,

11:31

but let me try to find that trait elsewhere

11:33

in other pursuits, right, And so ultimately

11:36

it is human connection that motivated me. And so it led

11:38

me to study cognitive science, right like it

11:41

led me to study the human mind, and it's

11:43

led me to do this podcast. That's

11:46

a long winded way of saying that it's

11:48

really helped me understand what

11:50

losing the violin at such a formative period of

11:52

my life taught me, as that I

11:54

had to see my identity as more malleable.

11:57

And it seems like Ruben did too. I

12:00

love what you just said. I can massively

12:02

relate to that. I

12:04

think that you know, yeah, Sound

12:06

of Metal and Ruben's journey

12:08

as a character does really interrogate this idea

12:11

of identity. At the start of the movie, he's

12:13

this, you

12:15

know, a drummer, a producer, a boyfriend

12:17

who lives this itinerant life on the road

12:20

in a touring band, and at the end of the movie

12:22

he's the opposite of pretty much all those things.

12:25

What's interesting is at the start of the movie, you

12:27

see him in almost a state of undress.

12:29

You know, he's shirtless, but

12:32

in a way he's he's wearing a mask. You know, he's

12:34

hidden behind the fortress of his drums, the

12:37

cannon. You know that

12:39

he's kind of firing out of the world to keep keep

12:41

the world at bay from getting close to him. And

12:44

he's hiding behind the mask of his blonde

12:46

hair and the mask of his tattoos. And

12:48

by the end of it, he's like all you

12:50

know, wrapped up in Paris and like a

12:53

coat and everything, but in a way he's more

12:55

naked than ever. He's taken the mask off. And it's

12:58

something I think about a lot, because you

13:00

know, the malluability of identity is

13:05

you know, sometimes becomes very apparent in these moments

13:07

of crises. And I can very much relate to

13:09

the experience you're talking about, and it's partly

13:12

what drew me towards both Sound and

13:14

Metal and Mogul Mowgli is going through a

13:16

much smaller, but you know, similar experience

13:19

to what those characters go through. Where I kind of found

13:21

myself kind of almost

13:23

you know, in a kind of state of physical you

13:25

know, breakdown, just total exhaustion.

13:28

My body just was just would not,

13:31

you know, allow me to function at the pace I was anymore.

13:34

My workaholism had kind of run its

13:36

course and landed me at this crossroads where I wondered

13:38

whether I could continue doing what I'm

13:40

doing, not just physically

13:43

but also emotionally. And what I

13:45

learned in that experience, which is, yeah,

13:48

the malleability of our identity, you

13:51

know. And at some point you realize the work

13:53

won't love you back. And at

13:55

some point you realize, even if the work is a tool to

13:57

get people to love you, that's

14:00

never going to be enough. It's about,

14:02

you know, self love, and

14:04

what does that mean? Accepting

14:06

yourself? You know, the person you know better

14:09

than anyone, all the dirt, under the rug,

14:11

the warts and all, you know, the stuff

14:13

that you don't anyone. You know that you've got to love that

14:15

person, need to accept that person. So

14:18

hard for so many of us, and particularly when you realize

14:20

as performers, many of us, rather than look

14:22

inwards, we're looking out to the audience. We're looking

14:24

for that round of applause, you know, we're looking

14:27

to have roses thrown at our feet as we bow because

14:30

we've got that deficit of self love internally,

14:34

and so I don't know that was having

14:36

performance taken away from me. Having the possibility

14:38

of that external you

14:40

know, fountain of validation

14:43

taken away from me forced me to look at that internal

14:45

deficit, forced me to try and start

14:47

exploring the story of self

14:49

love. Look, I love what you say about

14:52

this cloak we wear because I also

14:55

another moment that really resonated with me and

14:57

sounded metal is Rubin becomes

15:00

absolutely fixated on getting cochlear

15:02

implants as the plot develops, right,

15:05

thinking that's going to be the thing that

15:07

solves my problems, that's going to be the thing that solves

15:09

my angst and my anxiety. But

15:11

it doesn't at all provide the relief

15:14

that he had hoped for. But again, in these uncertain

15:16

times, we just cling to the few things we

15:18

feel are in our control, right,

15:20

and we try to tie our future happiness

15:23

to just those things. But you know, of course the story

15:25

is so much more complicated. Yeah,

15:27

what do you feel you found in that

15:30

process of letting go of control, in

15:32

that experience with the violin or in other life

15:34

experiences, like what's the kind

15:36

of shift, the kind of attitudinal

15:39

shift or that's taken place

15:41

for you, because I mean, you know, I can share

15:43

my own experience as well, but I'm interested to hear from

15:46

you what has come up when

15:48

you try to go down that road of acceptance.

15:51

Yeah, it's and

15:53

I definitely want to hear your thoughts on this. I think one

15:56

lesson is a sobering one, which is,

15:59

as humans, I think we can feel entitled

16:02

to exactly what I was going to say, Yeah,

16:07

gratitude rightsolutely,

16:09

so you start off, especially when

16:11

you're younger, though, I mean, honestly, this has followed

16:14

me throughout life. You feel, look

16:16

if I put in, if my inputs are there,

16:18

right, if I try really hard, if I work really hard, if

16:20

I crush every day, like certainly

16:22

it's an input output model, this life thing. And

16:25

then shit hits the fan over and over again

16:27

at various points in your life, and you realize control

16:30

is truly an illusion, and that

16:34

bad things befall great people all the

16:36

time, and there's no in

16:39

my mind sally, you know, I don't believe things happen

16:41

for a reason. I just believe life

16:43

is actually the randomness we

16:45

see around us. And that's both

16:48

a sad realization to have, but

16:50

it also is in my mind a more accurate

16:52

one to operate under, and

16:54

to me that brings me some solace. Like when

16:57

a bad thing happens, I don't feel it was willed by anyone

16:59

or anything. I just think it is in

17:01

that in the realm of randomness

17:04

that happens in our lives, that's so interesting.

17:06

So it's it's kind of like it's

17:09

basically I'm not taking it personally. It

17:11

sounds like you're saying that for you,

17:14

there's enough peace in

17:18

in depersonalizing the universe

17:20

that you don't then need to take an extra step, because

17:22

I guess there's two ways, Like I guess step one

17:25

is like bad things happen sometimes I'm taking

17:27

them personally, and good things happen sometimes

17:29

I'm taking them personally. I'm special

17:32

in the best and worst way. And

17:34

then you can go one of two ways. I guess the other one

17:36

one of them is what you're saying, which is actually

17:39

it's not personal and you're not special. It just

17:41

is, which I love. But I guess

17:43

there's also another route, which has

17:46

been interesting, which is good

17:50

things and bad things happen for

17:53

some kind of reason or that there

17:56

or that there's some kind of lesson in there. Even

17:58

if there isn't a lesson, even if they haven't happened

18:00

for a reason, we

18:02

can metabolize them into something

18:04

that we can come out the other side stronger. We

18:06

can. So there is some kind of

18:08

spiritual board

18:11

game that we're all playing that you can find

18:13

a gift inside every challenge. And

18:15

I kind of lead in that direction, not saying

18:18

that your approach you might not. I'm mutually

18:20

exclusive, but I think they're compatible. Is

18:22

I think the only change in word

18:24

I would use is rather than seeing it as a as

18:26

a spiritual journey or spiritual

18:28

outcome, I just see it as a cognitive one, which is

18:30

I think as humans we are natural

18:33

born storytellers, and we will

18:35

try and construct narratives out of the randomness

18:37

that happens to us, if only to justify

18:40

why things have happened to us.

18:42

Right, It's effortless for us to search

18:44

for silver linings, for example, after a tragedy,

18:47

because it just feels like we

18:49

must make sense of randomness. And

18:52

so I find that even though again I don't think the

18:55

universe had a reason behind

18:57

it, that like this thing was meant to happen, I'm

19:00

the same as you. I absolutely am

19:02

looking for a lesson to be learned,

19:04

a way to be stronger, something

19:07

that I might pull from the experience that

19:09

I might not have been able to pull from another experience.

19:11

I entered the same psychology

19:13

as you. I think we're just calling it slightly different things.

19:16

I love it, and I actually think that putting

19:20

trauma, putting good luck,

19:23

putting life like, shaping it into

19:25

story is it's

19:29

profoundly healing. I think it

19:31

actually strengthens us. It strengthens

19:33

our connections to each other and

19:36

to ourselves. It's not just

19:38

a kind of opium, yeah, that we kind

19:40

of, you know, indulge

19:42

ourselves with. I think it's

19:44

it's a core part of the equipment

19:47

we've been given on this planet. To

19:49

like it, be at

19:51

our best, connect with others and connect

19:53

to ourselves. We'll

19:59

be right back with a slight change of plans.

20:12

Riz Ahmed's most recent film is called

20:14

Mogul Mowgli, which he co wrote

20:17

with director Bassam Tarik. It's

20:19

the story of a British Pakistani rapper

20:21

named Zed who's just reaching the

20:23

height of his career when he's diagnosed with

20:25

an autoimmune condition and winds up in the hospital.

20:28

It's a story about family, about where

20:31

we come from and the meaning of home. Themes

20:33

that Riz says are pulled from his real life.

20:36

So it's a deeply kind of personal film. Bassama

20:39

and I realized, you know, as we became friends

20:41

who were thinking about what we'd like to make together, is

20:44

the one role I never get to play as someone like myself,

20:47

The one story he never gets to tell is his

20:50

story. I realized

20:52

that up until his point as

20:54

an actor, I've been kind of I'd

20:57

become adept to molding masks

21:01

and wearing them for the people and

21:04

representing other people, and representing

21:07

for other people a community would And

21:10

I realized that actually the next stage of

21:12

growth is about not molding and

21:14

wearing masks, but taking them off. Not

21:16

representing for others

21:19

or representing others, just presenting

21:21

yourself. And I've always

21:23

been driven by this idea, this mission

21:25

of trying to stretch culture, and I realize, actually can

21:27

tauting yourself to fit into other people's ready

21:30

made molds maybe doesn't stretch

21:32

culture as

21:35

much as contributing a new

21:37

mold, you know, bringing

21:41

all of yourself to the table.

21:43

So often, you know, particularly those of us have identities.

21:47

We always taught to leave part of ourselves at the door,

21:50

you know, And that's an amazing skill. You can build

21:52

an acting career off of it, you know, from a young age,

21:54

I'm kind of wearing shield of argems and speaking dut

21:56

home. Then I'm you know, dressed in a

21:58

suit and tie named after

22:01

kind of India's colonial British rulers

22:04

private school, and then I'm skipping

22:06

class to hang out with my boys, you know, on

22:08

the corner. And that's a totally different hybrid culture

22:11

as well. So I'm changing accents, changing costumes,

22:13

playing these different characters. Being

22:16

unable to bring all of myself to any of these

22:18

environments means I'm acting. And you know that's

22:21

great. That's a skill, but it can rob you of a core,

22:23

and it can allow you to internalize this idea

22:25

that there's something wrong with you. It can

22:29

really feed this lack of self love that

22:31

again, in turn drives your need for validation

22:33

and performance and wearing masks for other

22:35

people's approval and to fit in. And so this

22:38

film was very much about both me and

22:40

Z trying

22:43

to accept ourselves without a role or

22:46

a mask to hide behind. Yeah,

22:48

I mean, it can be so scary to look

22:51

in the mirror so critically

22:53

and so deeply, sometimes

22:55

just for fear of what we might find. Did

22:57

you face that? I mean, we're how

22:59

did you overcome any anxieties associated

23:02

with writing something and acting something that was so deeply

23:04

personal? You

23:06

know, honestly, this

23:08

was very scary film to make,

23:11

and I was kind of secretly hoping that no one would see

23:14

it. So the fact that people are seeing and

23:16

liking it is both lovely but terrifying.

23:19

But also I'd say the

23:21

fear of what I might find, or the fear

23:23

of being judged, was outweighed

23:25

by desperate need. I

23:27

had to try and make sense of some

23:30

of this, to try and metabolize

23:32

my own experience. The catharsis

23:36

that that I knew might be possible.

23:39

If I was able to shape all

23:41

these disparate strands of my identity and

23:43

all these weird contradictions

23:45

of my experience into story,

23:48

then it could cohere as a story.

23:51

Then it would help it to cohere

23:53

for me internally, you know, in my life.

23:56

Was there something specific that writing

23:59

Z taught you about

24:01

yourself? It

24:04

was interesting because with sound a metal, you

24:07

know, the script was written it was a master piece

24:09

by Darius Smyder. So I can look at it and step

24:11

back from it, and as you said, start at this

24:13

starting point of sitting outside of it, thinking,

24:16

oh, what is Ruben learning? What is this journey? What is

24:18

his arc? And you know, it's interesting because when

24:20

I was taking on the character of Ruben, I

24:22

thought, Okay, well, this guy's nothing like me,

24:24

you know, And then you start playing any

24:26

character and this is a journey you always go on

24:28

with every character, and hopefully the journey

24:31

the audience goes on with that character as well. You start

24:33

off going all right, who's this Guy's nothing like me? And by

24:35

the end of it, you're like, I'm exactly

24:37

this person. And that's because you

24:40

know, I mean, my belief is that the

24:42

differences that seemingly separate us are an

24:44

illusion. Deep down, we are we all share

24:47

the same emotional

24:49

core. We have different experiences, belief thoughts, but

24:51

we all feel the same things. And that's

24:53

kind of where we are in that super feeling

24:56

that we all ship. But I was like,

24:58

I'm not an addict. Whatever this is going to be research,

25:00

I'll go to my first kind of addiction recovery

25:03

meeting and I'm like, just I

25:06

feel like, did someone read my diary? Like

25:08

what this is all about me? I mean,

25:10

I, you know, I haven't if it's from

25:13

substance abuse in that way, but it's

25:15

like I don't know, just that the patterns,

25:17

the behaviors, the attitude, the entitlement,

25:20

that the tragedy of uniqueness,

25:22

you know, all of this kind of stuff with Mogul

25:24

Mowgli. In a way, even though the character, you

25:28

know, it's starting point, the seed of that

25:30

character is me. It

25:32

takes flight in its own way, and Z becomes his own

25:34

person. Even

25:37

though it's it's you know, I recognize

25:40

it as a starting point. I

25:42

don't have that separation. I'm not able to step back

25:45

and look at it and all right, what's the arc? What's the lesson?

25:47

You know, Bizarma and I were making this film.

25:51

You know, it's even hard for us now to depress about

25:53

it, and all the way through

25:55

making it. If you asked us, really, what's the film

25:57

about? Really what does Z learn? We'd

26:00

find it hard to articulate it. We're

26:02

so close to it that it's

26:04

hard to kind of articulate. But perhaps

26:06

that's why in a way, it's kind of give me

26:08

one of my profound lessons because it's

26:10

it's it hasn't been an intellectual one, It's

26:12

been an emotional one. And I think it is something

26:14

to do with self acceptance. I think,

26:17

you know, Zed learning to love himself or accept

26:19

himself, if not love himself outside

26:22

of a you know, a crowd of screaming

26:24

fans telling him he has worth, or

26:27

outside of his dad telling him

26:29

that he you know, isn't ashamed of him,

26:31

or you know, any of that stuff. I

26:36

think allowed me to also kind of go on

26:38

this journey and like, well, is

26:43

are we enough? Am I enough?

26:46

Is Risen enough? Riz when he's not playing a character Rism

26:48

when he's not being interviewed Riz, when he's not you

26:50

know, dressed up in nice clothes and stood in a

26:52

red carpet, It's like, are we enough? And

26:55

I think what Bissam and I

26:57

I think hoped to

27:01

challenge ourselves to to to believe in

27:03

making this film, is that we are enough, you

27:06

know, particularly as minorities or outside

27:08

as you internalize the idea that you're not, but we are,

27:10

We're enough. And I feel like,

27:13

yeah, in a way, it brings it back to that mantra and addiction

27:16

recovery. I am enough, I have enough, I do enough,

27:18

and I feel like something in

27:21

going on this journey with the character Z allowed

27:24

me to start believing that, you know, we

27:27

are enough. Yeah,

27:29

it's interesting, you know, Z, the main character receives

27:32

an autoimmune diagnosis, which ends

27:34

his rapping career. No. I

27:37

don't want to alarm you, misterron War, but from the scams

27:39

we've done, your muscles seem to be weakening. So

27:44

what is that, like, say, think stroke. It

27:47

could be a number of things. We need to run some more

27:49

tests to determine what course of action is best. Okay,

27:51

so I can stop buying a couple of weeks, get those done.

27:55

I got to all that starts in

27:57

less than a week. Let's

28:00

just try a couple of things, shall we. And

28:02

you've spoken about how this is a metaphor

28:04

for his own struggle

28:07

navigating his warring identities,

28:09

right, this idea that you know, your body

28:12

can't even recognize itself, so it's attacking itself.

28:14

And can you just say a little bit more about this and how

28:16

it might have in some way

28:19

reflected your own experience

28:22

straddling two cultures. Yeah,

28:24

what's interesting because people who live

28:26

in diaspora who

28:29

live in places are different to where their

28:32

ancestors have lived for many generations have

28:34

a much higher incidence of autoimmune conditions

28:36

than the general population. And Psalma and I when

28:38

we were thinking about how do we dramatize

28:41

tangibly, you know, Z's

28:43

lack of self love or his identity crisis,

28:45

or the way he keeps pushing away the

28:47

embrace of his culture, his inheritance

28:50

and where he's from. How

28:52

can he wrestle him to the floor. We

28:55

came up this idea, this autoimmunity and this inherited

28:57

condition, and as we

28:59

started researching it, there's kind of you

29:01

know three I'd say,

29:04

you know, there were three kind of theories that we found

29:06

interesting, of varying degrees of you know, signed

29:09

if research or data to back them up, but

29:11

you know, artistically we found and fascinating.

29:13

One is I think called minority stress theory.

29:16

Was this idea that if you're

29:18

an ethnic minority, you're implicitly and explicitly

29:20

told you're not welcome, so you feel threatened. Your immune

29:22

system is in a state of hyper vigilance, so it's an

29:24

overdrive. It can't switch off. There's

29:27

another theory which is that just that you

29:29

know about climate and diet. And this third

29:31

theory I came across this idea that you know, it's it's

29:33

an identity crisis played

29:35

out on a molecular level. The body doesn't recognize

29:37

itself, so it's rejecting itself. It's

29:40

almost a lack of self love. It's internalizing

29:44

this sense of being an outsider until it

29:46

manifests a kind of self hate. And

29:49

so we thought that that was a very

29:52

apt metaphor, but also something

29:54

that you know, I

29:57

don't know true to experience of a lot of people who've

29:59

you know, or outsiders

30:02

racially or otherwise. Yeah,

30:04

I so resonate with that. You've

30:07

taken on these really ambitious,

30:10

heavy roles and I

30:12

can't imagine it's all peaches and cream where

30:14

you you know, you're like immediately

30:17

enlightened and you see all these insights, right,

30:19

I imagine it's a it's a dirty, challenging,

30:23

potentially well being harming exercise

30:25

along the way, And for many

30:27

people who are navigating a change, they

30:30

have to do that hard work right along

30:32

the way, and it's so uncomfortable. It's

30:34

so challenging to put in that effort

30:37

to either figure oneself out or to navigate

30:39

a hard change. And I'm just wondering what advice you'd have

30:41

for listeners who are, you know, not acting

30:44

these roles, but are in a similar kind of challenging

30:46

circumstance. I

30:48

keep thinking of this real poem, this

30:51

idea, this is line in it? Does

30:54

it go to the limits of your longing? It's

30:57

a beautiful poem, and in it there

30:59

is this line and it just says, just

31:02

keep going. No feeling

31:05

is final, and

31:07

I just love it. I

31:09

just think, yeah,

31:13

I think, so we can do, right, we

31:15

keep going till we can't. But when we can't

31:17

go any further, just know that there'll

31:19

be people who that that keep going. You

31:22

know, Dodd and

31:24

their journey on was only been made possible by

31:27

you know, the footsteps you put

31:29

down. So I don't know, I just feel like I

31:33

don't know. I don't have any answers. I don't know if we

31:35

ever get to any but we just keep going,

31:37

you know, we just keep going. I'm

32:00

assuming you've you've made this movie. It's

32:02

out that it's probably just the first chapter.

32:04

Is that how you see it? So what you're saying is seem

32:07

cool. Yeah, that's what I'm

32:09

saying. I've just commissioned. I have no

32:11

budget, but you know your license. Let's

32:14

do it. Hey,

32:17

thanks for listening. Join me next

32:19

week when I talk to Annie Duke, an internationally

32:22

renowned poker champion who's won more than

32:24

four million dollars. Annie's

32:26

also an expert on the science of quitting, something

32:29

she thinks we should do a lot more of. You

32:32

know, one of the reasons I think I'm so fascinated

32:34

with quitting is because I was a poker player,

32:36

and what distinguishes great poker players

32:39

from everybody else is that is mainly

32:41

quitting. They quit a lot more so,

32:43

they're just very good at cutting their losses. A

32:56

Slight Change of Plans is created, written

32:58

an executive produced by me Maya Schunker.

33:00

The best part of creating this show is getting to

33:03

collaborate with my formidable Slight Change

33:05

family. This includes Tyler

33:07

Green, our senior producer, Jen Guera,

33:09

our senior editor, Ben Holiday,

33:11

our sound engineer, Emily Rostek

33:14

our associate producer, and Neil Lavelle,

33:16

our executive producer. Louise

33:18

Scara wrote our delightful theme song, and

33:20

Ginger Smith helped arrange the vocals. A

33:23

Slight Change of Plans is a production of Pushkin

33:25

Industries, so big thanks to everyone

33:27

there, as well as Razza Hellem for his

33:30

insights on this interview, and

33:32

of course a very special thanks to Jimmy

33:34

Lee. You can follow a Slight

33:37

Change of Plans on Instagram at doctor

33:39

Maya Schunker and please remember

33:41

to subscribe, share and rate the show to

33:43

help get the word out. See you next week.