Riz Ahmed has revealed he’s lost two members of his family to coronavirus.
Addressing the effect the pandemic – which he liked to ‘an alien invasion’ – has had on society, the Venom actor said the crisis was ‘reflecting and revealing the faultlines’.
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The actor and rapper hopes the surge of appreciation for the NHS, what with the weekly 8pm claps and rainbows in windows, will also draw attention to prejudice against the ethnic minorities that keep it running.
He told GQ Hype: ‘Who are the people who, for every moment of crisis in this country, have kept this country together? It’s the people at the bottom of the barrel; the people being hit hardest by this pandemic.
‘We say we love the NHS more than the Royal Family, more than the army, but do we love the people who keep the NHS alive? Because every time we tell people to f**k off back to where they came from, that’s not what we’re saying.
‘So I really hope that this revelation, this awakening, opens our minds to that reality, to the stupidity of our prejudice.’
The star has also suffered his own links to the virus, having tragically lost people close to him.
He said: ‘I have lost two family members to Covid. I just want to believe their deaths and all the others aren’t for nothing.
‘We gotta step up to reimagine a better future.’
Riz continued: ‘Coronavirus is on some level an alien invasion, isn’t it? It’s bringing humanity together against the common enemy.
‘So there is this potential for this momentous, unique-in-the-history-of-our-species moment, of us all going through this crazy challenge together and only being able to get through this together.
‘And yet, in the midst of that, insofar as any crisis is a mirror, reflecting your priorities and patterns, this crisis is reflecting and revealing the faultlines in our society, the broken records that are stuck in our head, the f***eries and the power plays that are still dominating how we are running our planet, the rising intolerance.’
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So far more than 207,000 people have died from coronavirus, with nearly 3million testing positive. In the UK, the death toll has topped 20,000 with more than 153,000 testing positive.
The full interview is online at GQ Hype.
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