Why Riz Ahmed Was ‘Obsessed’ with ‘Hamlet’ as a Teen (Exclusive)

Riz Ahmed performs Hamlet’s “To be or not to be” speech like you’ve never seen before in his new movie. 

A modern-day-set adaptation of William Shakespeare’s tragedy Hamlet, featuring the Oscar and Emmy winner in the title role, sets his classic soliloquy on a London highway. Ahmed, 42, waxes poetic while behind the wheel, speeding against traffic. 

“I was introduced to [Hamlet] when I was a teenager, and I became obsessed with it,” Ahmed says at the PEOPLE/EW and Shutterstock studio at the Toronto International Film Festival on Sept. 6. Hamlet, directed by Aneil Karia and adapted by Michael Lesslie, premiered at the fest on Sept. 5. 

“I found it at a moment when it just resonated with me deeply,” explains the English actor, “as a young man trying to work out, what does it mean to be a man?”

Shakespeare’s Danish prince is “figuring that out,” says Ahmed, adding that the iconic “To be or not to be” soliloquy isn’t, as is widely believed, Hamlet debating the merits of death. 

“I remember we were always taught that it was about suicide and about feeling that you can’t go on in life,” says the Relay star. “At least in my view, it’s not saying that. It’s saying, should we suffer injustice and just go along with it? Or should we fight back even if we know it’ll kill us? Which is a really, really different idea.”

Hence setting that moment in a high-speed drive against traffic. “The thing we wanted to reveal is that ‘To be or not to be’ is not a moment of philosophizing. It’s a moment of psyching yourself up to do the unthinkable… shaking yourself into taking action. It’s a game of chicken, and so we filmed it as a game of chicken.”

Other updates to the adaptation, set in present-day London’s South Asian community, include setting Hamlet’s attempt to catch his uncle in a lie at an Indian wedding. Ahmed is both star and producer of Hamlet alongside producing partner Karia, his collaborator on their Oscar-winning 2020 short The Long Goodbye.

The Bard’s themes resonate in a modern context as much as they did at the turn of the 17th century, says Ahmed. The play “is really about grief. Hamlet is grieving his father, but he’s also grieving his illusions and ideas about how he thought the world worked. And he’s being confronted with what the world really is, which is a really unfair place, and he feels a bit powerless and confused about that. He feels a bit complicit in it as well.”

He adds, “That’s, I think, how a lot of us are feeling now.”

As for memorizing and delivering Shakespeare’s lines, the actor says their iambic pentameter made the task “really easy.” The dialogue “works its way into your mind and your body in a very hypnotic way. You can just instinctively feel when something’s off. It is harder to get a line wrong for that reason. Shakespeare is very clever. And that way of writing verse, poetry and plays at that time… It definitely has kind of a magic to it.”

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Focus Features will release Hamlet at a to-be-announced date following its premieres in Telluride and Toronto. The movie costars Morfydd Clark, Joe Alwyn, Art Malik, Timothy Spall, Sheeba Chaddha and Avijit Dutt.