AN Oscar-winning actor has claimed that a top BBC executive tried to get him to work for the secret service.
Riz Ahmed, the star of the new Amazon series Bait, made the claim during a conversation with journalist Mehdi Hasan on his media platform Zeteo.
Asked by a member of the audience about being approached to work for the British intelligence services, Ahmed said: “Well, it's happened three different times and they're all slightly ridiculous, and this is what I mean by it, it's just like inherently comedic.
“One was when I came back from my first film, Road to Guantanamo, we landed at Luton Airport celebrating. They took me into a side room, put me in an arm lock, threatened to break my arm, took my phone, were pretending to bash the buttons, accidentally changed the language to Danish, and then kind of like, were like, ‘did you become an actor to further the Muslim struggle?’
“I was like, this is hilarious. And then when I finished that, they were like, ‘OK. Would you like to keep an eye out for us, cause it was really great the way you were answering those questions?’
“It was like, no thank you."
Hollywood actor Riz Ahmed says he was approached by the intelligence services 3 times. pic.twitter.com/dKzTzeUjAH
— S2J News (@s2jnews) May 21, 2026
He went on: “Second time was through a family friend, that was a bit like ‘Oh, sugar. That's what's going on there.’
“And the third time was someone, senior, high up at the BBC.”
Ahmed added that they were someone “who's just left the BBC”, but did not name them.
Hasan asked how people could be sure that Ahmed had not accepted any invitations to work for the security services, to which the actor quipped that it would make a “sick biopic”.
Novara Media's Aaron Bastani shared Ahmed's claim, writing: "Riz Ahmed says someone from the BBC tried to recruit him … for the security services.
"You have to be incredibly naive if you don’t think this stuff happens quite regularly. It’s a regime broadcaster. That’s not even a criticism – that’s just what it is!"
Ahmed won an Oscar for the short film The Long Goodbye in 2022. He is also a musician, and the film was accompanied by a concept album of the same name.
In 2017, Ahmed won the Emmy award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Limited Series or Movie for his performance in The Night Of. He was the first Asian and first Muslim man ever to win an acting Emmy.
Ahmed’s show Bait, in which he plays an actor tipped to be the first non-white James Bond, is currently showing on Amazon.
