British actor and rapper Rizwan Ahmed is back on screen with a new show ‘Bait’. The 43-year-old Academy Award winner has been promoting his much-hyped work on a press tour with a video that has now gone viral. In a session with Juggernaut, Ahmed claimed that being South Asian is like ‘being in a spy thriller.’ “We get it for free,” he said. Ahmed, who plays lead actor Shah Latif in his latest film, said that when Jordan Peele made ‘Get Out’ he said that being black in America was like being in a horror movie. He said his thesis on the situation was that “being brown in the West is really like being stuck in a spy thriller.” He claimed that brown people in the area were the subject of constant suspicion and surveillance and were being followed. Furthermore, he said that people were left chasing acceptance of natives, while also being chased by their inner critics and the voices they had internalized. “So that’s one of the things I wanted to play with on the show,” he shared. The Bat is a six-episode series where a rapper-turned-actor finds himself in the running to replace Daniel Craig as the new 007 despite being embroiled in a crisis. Ahmed’s comments ring true in a climate where hatred towards immigrants, particularly South Asians and Indians, is on the rise in the West. A recent survey by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in the US showed that one in four Americans has been abused. The report described the US as the “epicenter of anti-India digital racism”, while revealing that it has led to one in five respondents shying away from wearing bindi and tilak to avoid personal discrimination. In Britain, a report by London Police revealed that South Asians were the second most targeted group in 2025, with 35 incidents recorded, representing a 105.9% increase in cases compared to the previous year.