Riz Ahmed Has Never Auditioned for Bond, but His Show ‘Bait’ Is a Chance to Throw Himself in the Mix

It seems like every actor, especially those from the United Kingdom, has had some sort of brush with playing James Bond. In his new Amazon series “Bait,” creator and star Riz Ahmed turns the fallout of a busted 007 audition on its head. The Oscar nominee stars as struggling actor Shah Latif who, at first, blows a shot at the coveted role. Until he gets another chance, and his public and private worlds implode from his online presence to his relationships with his Pakistani-British immigrant family.

“Bait,” which premiered three episodes at the 2026 Sundance Film Festival before it drops on Amazon Prime Video on March 25, is an industry and cultural satire with the freneticism of “The Studio” matched to Ahmed (and co-star Guz Khan’s) uniquely immigrant perspective.

“My elevator pitch at the time was: It’s about an out-of-work actor who somehow gets through to the last round of auditions to play the next James Bond. And when word gets out that he might be the next James Bond, everyone has a strong opinion on it, and soon his life starts to be as confusing and paranoid as a spy thriller that he is auditioning for,” said Ahmed, with whom the series reunites him behind the camera with “Mogul Mowgli” director Bassam Tariq. Ahmed was joined by his co-star Khan at IndieWire’s Sundance Studio.

Ahmed has never auditioned to play James Bond, but the “Sound of Metal” Oscar nominee hasn’t not been in the conversation to play 007 at some point. “I’ve met [Bond franchise head] Barbara Broccoli a couple of times, but if anything, I felt like I didn’t have enough of a brush with playing James Bond, so I decided to make a six-episode comedy show just to drop a really subtle hint into the mix, just to put it out there,” he joked.

The show, he said, is “about a character who wants to be perceived one way but actually feels another way. He wants to be thought of as desirable and decisive and alpha male enough to be Bond, but actually, his life’s falling apart, and he’s a bit of a mess. Me making this show is personally an attempt to close that gap. I want to share my private neuroses publicly and almost enjoy them, and say, this is the messiness of my psyche.”

Watch the full conversation with the “Bait” team in the video above.

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