Its break-out star Nabhaan Rizwan tells Claire Allfree about the beauty of east London, and where he’s going next
moved to London in the early Nineties but would put on shows in church halls across Ilford and make her sons appear in them. But when she started appearing in Mawaan’s videos (“We all did, we were free actors for him”) Bollywood came calling again. She has just finished a five-year stint filming Yeh Hai Mohabbatein (This is Love), one of India’s most popular soaps.
Yet, although Rizwan knew as a teenager that he too wanted to act, he struggled to find opportunities for studying it after A levels. He paid for two audi- tions for drama school, and hated the first one so much he didn’t bother with the second. “It costs £80 just to audition, and then you’ve got fees on top of that. The standard approach is that you go for all of them, even those that might be in Bristol, or in Wales, so that you can give yourself as many options as you can. That’s incredibly expensive. By charging to audition, drama schools are missing out on a whole wave of talent. Most working-class kids simply can’t afford even to try.”
Then he got wind of Actors Learning Training (ALT), a free training scheme for people from low-income families, and joined. It was while there that he was picked up by an agent.
Has he since found his options constrained within an industry that still tends to cast Asian actors in stereotypical roles? Rizwan is hesitant, unwilling perhaps to attack a system in which he is just finding his feet. “You never know the reason why you didn’t get a part because you never hear back,” he says. “And racism is very covert in this country, which you could say makes it more dangerous. So I simply don’t know the answer to that.”
Still, he must think the British Asian experience is poorly served on mainstream TV? He looks a bit bewildered.
“People always ask me about that but I think the question is a bit ridiculous,” he says politely. “For one thing, a lot of British Asian people grew up not knowing what it was even supposed to mean to be British Asian. Partly that’s because you mainly don’t think about it. I’m not going down the street thinking, I’m British Asian today, what does that mean? Plus, we get told that TV shows like Goodness Gracious Me and Citizen Khan are intended to reflect the British Asian experience, but these shows just leave us all confused. We’re like, is that really what it means? We don’t think so.
“But, if you are talking about changing the sorts of parts that are out there, then more Asian actors must become writers,” he continues. “We have too many ideas not to put them onto paper. As soon as that starts happening, the whole industry is going to flow. You can see it already in the cross-pollination that’s going on: music video directors crossing over to films, that sort of thing. Stuff is starting to happen.”
Rizwan leads by example. In fact he describes himself as a writer first and an actor second, and is working on a play script that he hopes to finish next year. He also writes poetry and raps and is “super-stoked” about an album he has put together. “I only got to where I am by being proactive,” he says, citing his brother’s success as an inspiration. “And I am going to continue to be proactive. I know who I want to work with and where I want to be.”
⬤ The final episode of Informer is on BBC One tomorrow at 9pm
I knew straight away there were commonalities with my character. I recognised his behaviour, the way he spoke