Riz Ahmed Reveals How He Got Rare James Bond Approval to Make 'Bait'—but With One Catch
Riz Ahmed is a major Hollywood star, with credits ranging from Rogue One to Girls to The Phoenician Scheme, but is he James Bond material? For every male actor of a certain age, this question has probably come up more than once. And in the funny, deeply personal new Prime Video series Bait, Ahmed takes a metafictional look at the journey of an actor—Shah Latif, a character who serves as a kind of cipher for himself.
The setup of the series is fairly simple: Shah is a struggling actor auditioning to play the next James Bond, and that fact slowly, and hilariously, ruins his life. But in 2026, how can you take the idea of James Bond and put that in a comedy show?
"I thought we'd have to do fake Bond," Ahmed tells Men's Journal with a laugh. "Everyone said that Barbara Broccoli will never let you use this because she's rightly very protective of this IP." When Ahmed was first developing Bait, Broccoli was still in charge of the Bond franchise, prior to the shocking and historical sale of the property to Amazon MGM in early 2025. So, if anyone thinks that Bait is the product of Amazon's new ownership of 007, think again. This project had the blessing of the old-school Bond franchise stewards, making the metafictional aspects of the show even more unique.
"She [Broccoli] had one stipulation," Ahmed reveals. "She said, 'Just don't depict me.' But she said we could use it, that we could do it, which was crazy. It's never happened before. I'm not sure Amazon would let us do it now, and they'd be right to be suspicious. It's such a coup."
Although Bait is more about Shah's life and his interactions with his family and friends, the specter of Bond (see what we did there) looms large for a reason. The idea that Bait takes the experience of an actor like Shah and uses Bond as a metaphor is the reason why Ahmed says that Broccoli accepted the project. "She understood the show's not really about Bond. But Bond is really important as a kind of cultural symbol of aspiration, acceptance, desirability, and decisiveness. He's everything we want to be."
Bait is full of some very deep-cut James Bond Easter eggs—some of which have a double meaning. In the second episode, Ahmed's character discusses a film with another actor (Hamish Patel) called Underneath the Mango Tree. This is a reference to a song of the same name, composed for the movie 1962 Dr. No, the first Bond film ever.
"You are the first person to get that, bro!" Ahmed enthuses when talking about the reference. But he also points out that specific reference is also a bit of a spoof on certain kinds of films. "That was also meant to skewer stereotypical South Asian fare and try to bring those things together in a way."
Bait is a clash of cultures in several ways, and Shah's Muslim heritage is central to the story, which is a point Ahmed wanted to make clear. "Being brown in the Western world is sometimes like living in a spy thriller," he says. "It was really important to me to pay homage to locations in the show. The way a Bond movie says 'somewhere in the Caribbean.' I wanted to do that with my hood in London, and elevate the quotidian experience of us in multicultural London to that epic scale of a spy thriller."
In addition to the Bond references and cultural dives, Ahmed also hopes Bait has something to say about making sure people, especially men, value the real world in front of them, without getting caught up in a fantasy.
"I think we're taught sometimes that being a man is about putting on a mask and performing a version of yourself," Ahmed says. "And now I'm more and more convinced it's about taking the mask off. But it's a lifelong journey of learning. I think it's important to own up to the mistakes we make. If there's one message in Bait, it's saying, 'This is my mess.' There's power in owning that."