British actor Rizwan Ahmed claims South Asians are ‘constantly chased’ in the West: ‘Being Brown is a spy thriller’

British actor and rapper Rizwan Ahmed is back on the screens with a new show ‘Bait’. The 43-year-old Academy Award winner has been promoting his much-loved work in a press tour that has now gone viral with one video.

In a session with Juggernaut, Ahmed claimed that being a South Asian is like ‘being in a spy thriller’. “We get it for free,” he said. Ahmed who stars as the main lead Shah Latif in his latest, said that when Jordan Peele made ‘Get Out’ he said that being Black in America is like being in a horror movie. He said his thesis on the situation was that “being Brown in the West is actually like being stuck in a spy thriller.” He claimed brown people in the region were the subject of suspicion and surveillance constantly along with being chased.

Moreover, he added that people were left chasing the approval of the natives while also being chased by their inner critic and the voices they have internalised. “So that’s kind of one of the things I wanted to play with in the show,” he shared.

Bait is a six-episode series where a rapper turned actor finds himself in contention to replace Daniel Craig as the new 007, while being embroiled in a crisis. Ahmed’s comments ring true in an environment where hate towards immigrants, South Asians and Indians in particular has been on the rise in the West. In America, a recent survey by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace revealed that one in four Americans has been called a slur.

The report described US as the “epicentre of anti-Indian digital racism,” while revealing that this led to one in five respondents shying away from wearing bindis and tilaks to avoid in-person discrimination. In Britain, a London police report showed South Asians were the second most targeted group in 2025, with 35 reported incidents, marking a 105.9% increase in cases from the previous year.