Riz Ahmed has revealed he recently got married.
The Rogue One star and rapper, 38, who last year said he had lost two family members to coronavirus, did not reveal the name of his wife but said it was “not very long” ago when he tied the knot.
He told the Grounded With Louis Theroux podcast: “I think it’s the first time I’ve ever mentioned it in an interview.
“So, congratulations on this incredibly exciting scoop.
“I mean, I guess I don’t really feel it’s generally that relevant, so I don’t really delve into my personal life or my dating history or even family life much, and to be honest the main reason I decided to share more publicly about my uncle and aunt who passed away, because I felt like there are a lot of people who weren’t taking Covid seriously.
“So I felt like talking about it and saying, ‘Hey look, this is a real thing, it’s affected me and my family.’
“You know, talking about it, a spoken word piece that touched on that as well.
“I guess I don’t feel like it’s that necessary to go, ‘Hey, here’s everything that’s happening in my life’.”
Ahmed also discussed the “culture shock” he experienced as a student at Oxford, and said the same kind of “classism” exists in the UK film industry.
He said: “My parents were just very focused on education. Rather than going on holidays or anything like that we try and get a tutor in to get us ready for the entrance exams, try to work out how to get us into private schools which were, in many ways, like a culture shock to begin with, just like Oxford was.
“But also training, I think it’s like so much of navigating life in Britain.
“In most rooms where decisions are made it’s about being able to be conversant in that upper middle class English, and I don’t just mean in terms of how you talk, but just being comfortable in those spaces, which took me a long time.
“I still sometimes find myself confronted with that discomfort. You know that sense of imposter syndrome if you’re not to the manor born.
“And so, in many ways, it prepared me for navigating that.
“The film industry in the UK, I think, is rife with the same kind of classism and it was a weird experience. Also, I wouldn’t trade it for anything, at Oxford, I thought about leaving quite early on, I just felt very isolated and alienated from the whole vibe there.
“And then I thought, actually, the place where you don’t feel like you belong is maybe where you belong, is where you should be, is maybe where you can contribute something new, where you can grow.
“We have to learn to be comfortable with the discomfort of that. And I ended up having a great experience where I did a lot of acting in the plays there, and I put on a club night that helped pay my way through that, and was an opportunity for me to really continue practising getting on the mic as an MC… It’s usually the way that the challenges are the gifts.”
BBC Radio 4’s Grounded With Louis Theroux is available now on BBC Sounds.