British actor Riz Ahmed casually forgot to mention that he's off the market (cry). In an interview on the Grounded podcast, the 38-year-old actor let it slip that "he hadn’t been married for very long,” which is the first time he's ever mentioned being married at all.
Ahmed is currently in Northern California, where he was reportedly wrapping up filming on a new project. He said he decided to stay for a while after filming wrapped because it’s where his “wife’s family” is from. “I think it’s the first time I’ve mentioned it in an interview so congratulations on that incredibly exciting scoop," Ahmed said.
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“I don’t really feel it’s generally that relevant, so I don’t delve into my personal life or dating history," he continued, without saying anything else about his marriage or new spouse.
On January 13, however, Ahmed revealed more details about his recent nuptials, as well as the identity of his wife, on The Tonight Show With Jimmy Fallon. She is novelist Fatima Farheen Mirza, whose 2018 novel A Place For Us was a New York Times Bestseller . The two met in a New York cafe while he was prepping for his role in Sound of Metal (the romance!).
He told Fallon meeting her was one of the reasons why the film was so special to him. "Obviously, I met Fatima for the first time and met so many people in the deaf community that have become friends. And there's just something about this whole period around this film that was kind of life changing," he said.
As for the wedding, Ahmed said that they kept it "super intimate and socially distanced," because they are smart and trustworthy people. "There was just like, hardly anyone there really," he said. "We did it in a backyard, which is nice in lots of ways. And I think the nicest thing about it was you didn't have 500 aunties hanging around you, pinching your cheeks."
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"No disrespect to the aunties," he joked, "but Asian weddings are big. You always got these people crawling out the woodworks, who I think are kind of probably imposters. They just smell the kebabs on the street and just wander in."
It makes sense that revealing this personal news wouldn't be the first thing on his mind (no offense to Mirza). Besides being a private person, Ahmed has been pretty busy: on January 11, he won a best actor award at the Gotham Independent Film Awards for his new film, Sound of Metal, in which he plays a heavy-metal drummer who begins to lose his hearing. More like the Sound of Matrimony, amirite?
Refinery29 reached out to Ahmed for comment.
This story has been updated with new information.