Riz Ahmed is once again teaming up with Aneil Karia, this time for a new adaptation of “Hamlet.” And for the actor, Shakespeare’s classic story is more resonant than ever because entire swaths of people are now being made to feel “powerless” and “gaslit.”
Karia’s take on the classic play is set in present-day London, but still maintains the original text. Ahmed stars as the Dane and, sitting down with TheWrap’s Steve Pond at the Toronto International Film Festival on Friday, he and Karia delighted in the fact that Ahmed is just one of the many Hamlets in pop culture right now.
Oscar Isaac’s documentary “King Hamlet” tells the story of how he took on and crafted the role, Chloé Zhao’s “Hamnet” hits theaters later this year and Thom Yorke has an interpretive dance adaptation of Hamlet currently running in the UK.
“I think there is something about this story that has to be heard right now,” Ahmed said. “I think it very much is very resonant with the time we’re living in.”
The actor doesn’t struggle to place why exactly that is. For him, the element of “Hamlet” that is landing with audiences today is the same element that drew Ahmed to the play when he was a teenager: grief.
“He’s grieving his father, but he’s also grieving the way that things used to be,” Ahmed explained. “He’s grieving the illusion that the world was a fairer place. I think that’s being torn up right in front of our eyes right now, isn’t it?”
“And what we’re all feeling is powerless in the face of that, gaslit about the reality of that, and complicit in it. That’s ‘Hamlet,’” he continued. “That’s what’s the core of the play. That’s what goes to the heart of the present moment that we’re living in right now.”
The result of feeling powerless and gaslit, the actor argued, is “a destructive rage.”
Read all of TheWrap’s TIFF coverage here.
