Riz Ahmed Could Start a Boy Band with Guys He Met During an Airport Security Search

-I got to say, "The Night Of," "Girls,"
"Star Wars: Rogue One,"
you're the most famous human being now on Earth.
Do you get recognized everywhere?
Do people come up to you and stop you on the street?
-You know, it's a weird thing, 'cause a lot of this happened
really quickly, so people recognize me a lot,
but they don't know what they recognize me from.
-Yeah. -Do you know what I mean?
So they'll kind of --
People will just stare at me and point and be like...
[ Laughter ]
-"Nah, no..."
-And then they'll come up to me and go,
"Dude, do I know you from somewhere?"
And if they really don't know,
then you can actually have quite a lot of fun with that.
'Cause you can just be like,
"Yeah, we went to high school together."
[ Laughter ]
A good one is like, "I used to date your sister.
How's she doing? I hope she's married now.
What's going on with that?" [ Laughter ]
-That's pretty good.
And where does it get -- Where's the worst,
where you get busted, where you get recognized?
-I mean, it's never terrible getting recognized,
but sometimes, it's super awkward.
Like, okay, I get --
I get randomly selected for secondary searches
every time I fly to America.
[ Light laughter ]
I'm glad you find it funny. Thanks a lot.
[ Laughter ]
Cheers.
Well, I mean, look.
Racial profiling -- it's always a waste of time,
it's a waste of money.
It kind of alienates people, but it's also super awkward.
It's like, people will be, like, swiping me for explosives,
making sure it's safe to let me on the plane,
and at the end of the search, they'll be like,
"Dude, I loved 'Rogue One.' Can I have a selfie?"
-Yeah. [ Laughter ]
Yeah, yeah. You were just in my business.
-Yeah.
-But the thing I think is, like, if I say no to that selfie,
will they let me on the plane? [ Light laughter ]
They've got a lot of power then. But I know, it's weird.
It's like, if you know who I am, why -- I don't know.
Waste of time.
-You recently met --
This is called the Ahmed Three. -[ Laughing ]
-And just explain, what is this?
-Okay. So, like I said,
I always get pulled aside for secondary searches.
I think it was at, like,
Minneapolis Airport or something.
They said, "Mr. Ahmed for a secondary search."
So all three of us went up.
[ Laughter ]
-Oh, my goodness. Three Ahmeds.
-The staff didn't know who to search.
I mean, Ahmed's very common surname,
so the staff didn't know who to search.
They just searched all of us, and we were like,
"Yo, this is more sociable than it normally is,"
and we were all, like, hanging out.
-You had fun with it.
-Yeah, we were, like, swapping stories.
Like, "Yo, you better stay away from Miami Airport.
It's the worst," and just, like, talking.
And so I thought, let me just take a little selfie,
and I did this little Facebook post.
I said, "We're gonna start a boy band."
-Yeah, exactly. Starting a boy band called --
-And a weird thing happened is, it became, like, a meme,
and people started drawing fan art
about this fake boy band, called The Ahmed Three.
[ Laughter ] -It's a fake band.
-Well, right now, but if these guys are watching...
[ Laughter ]
If you guys are watching, call me, 'cause I've never --
-Yeah, let's make this work. -Yeah.
The first single, they said,
should be called "Randomly Searching For You."
[ Laughter and applause ]
-It's a beautiful song.
"Randomly Searching For You."
That's like -- Ah. That's like a wedding song.
It's fantastic.
Hey, you got to be proud of this.
You're on the cover of Time Magazine, my friend.
[ Cheers and applause ]
"The 100 most influential people."
I mean, how surreal is that? Is that cool?
-That's still surreal. Like, is this real?
-No, it's not. We made this in Times Square, yeah.
-You did. [ Laughter ]
-Anyone can do it, yeah.
This is the 100 most influential people,
and they picked like five people to be on the cover,
and you're one of the five people.
-Yeah, I owe someone at Time Magazine a lot of money.
A lot of money. It's weird, I don't know.
Look, it feels really nice for me, obviously, personally,
but the thing that I always think of is,
growing up, I often didn't see people like me in the culture,
and when you don't see yourself reflected back like that,
it kind of sends a message to you that you don't matter
or your story doesn't matter.
So, hopefully, there might be some kids out there
that see this and think, you know, "Wow.
I could maybe do that, as well," you know?
[ Cheers and applause ]

Riz Ahmed Could Start a Boy Band with Guys He Met During an Airport Security Search

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