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"The UK&amp;#039;s foremost satirist Chris Morris made his movie debut earlier this year with comedy Four Lions, about a group of inept terrorists planning an attack on London. It naturally courted controversy, perhaps overshadowing the fact that it&amp;#039;s a piercingly funny and moving film. With the DVD and Blu-ray hitting shelves this week, we caught up with Riz to discuss all things Four Lions. When Chris Morris approached you for this film was it an instant &amp;quot;yes&amp;quot;? &amp;quot;On one level it is, from a gut instinct level it is. Chris Morris is a genius, super-intelligent, I knew him quite well at that point. Leading up to his offer of a role, we&amp;#039;d been meeting up every couple of months for about three years talking about everything and nothing, touching on the subject of what the script was about. I trusted him, knew he was a genius, thought he was hilarious and it was the perfect content for a script. I guess there&amp;#039;s a little whisper in your head saying, &amp;#039;Could this all go the wrong way?&amp;#039;. As soon as you read the script, there&amp;#039;s really no question because it&amp;#039;s just a very human comedy. Any preconceptions or anxieties people have about the nature of the comedy immediately evaporates once they watch the film.&amp;quot; Was it a bit frustrating having to defend the movie? The press seemed to be focusing on the controversial subject matter and overlooking the comedic and emotional elements of the film? &amp;quot;You see journalists doing the job they&amp;#039;re paid to do. I guess it&amp;#039;s a no-brainer they&amp;#039;re going to ask that question. You don&amp;#039;t really need to do much spin doctorey maneuvers to diffuse it because you&amp;#039;re just telling them it&amp;#039;s not a comedy about terrorism, it&amp;#039;s a comedy about terrorists. It&amp;#039;s about four or five in particular who happen to be human beings... It&amp;#039;s not the more boring, pompous, indulgently controversial film that maybe journalists want it to be. It&amp;#039;s something more universal. It&amp;#039;s not a film about politics, it&amp;#039;s a film about plonkers.&amp;quot; Did you and the three other guys spend a lot of time together to bond before filming? &amp;quot;We met up a lot for rehearsals, Chris works in quite a fluid way and he brings us in to read the text that he&amp;#039;d written up with Sam [Bain] and Jesse [Armstrong] then lets us go off piste a little bit. He&amp;#039;d lead and guide the improvisation then harvest that back into the script. I&amp;#039;d worked with Arsher Ali before on Britz, but the rest of us didn&amp;#039;t really know each other at all. We got quite close during filming because we were all put up in this slightly depressing, claustrophobic student halls in the middle of a building site in Sheffield town centre. We developed cabin fever living in each other&amp;#039;s pockets. We took on a group dynamic that wasn&amp;#039;t too dissimilar to the one on-screen - ranting, arguing and taking the p*ss out of each other!&amp;quot; Does that mean Kayvan really does have a problem with Mini Babybels? &amp;quot;Yeah, and he keeps going on about the fact that he improvised that line - I think he still wants his Blue Peter badge for that one! Kayvan has a problem with a lot of things, mainly remaining silent for more than three seconds! That injected a manic energy into everything. It was such a wildly different bunch of guys, Kayvan just talks non-stop, utter s**t, in as many different voices as he can. He has the attention span of a butterfly! Nigel is quite theatrical and Arsher is purely method. I talk to myself a lot, it was quite a surreal scene of us all clumped around a park bench just mumbling, ranting and poking each other before going on set. It was a lot of fun, though, we&amp;#039;ve all stayed friends.&amp;quot; Did you get to pick the Honey Monster costume or was that forced upon you? &amp;quot;No, that was Chris. A lot of the footage you have of the Honey Monster running is actually Warp Films producer Mark Herbert. He&amp;#039;s running around because I was unavailable that day. That&amp;#039;s actually Mark running, and it&amp;#039;s the weakest part of my performance. That&amp;#039;s Mark&amp;#039;s fault!&amp;quot; What can we see you in next? &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m just filming at the moment a film directed by Ben Drew, Plan B, it&amp;#039;s being shot by Gary Shaw from Moon. It&amp;#039;s quite a bold and edgy script and it&amp;#039;s a role I don&amp;#039;t think I&amp;#039;ve really played before, that&amp;#039;s really a super-low-budget film with quite an exciting team. After that I&amp;#039;m going to be shooting a film (Black Thirst) directed by Jean-Jacques Annaud, I&amp;#039;m going to play Tahar Rahim&amp;#039;s brother. Antonio Banderas is playing our dad and Frieda Pinto&amp;#039;s playing my sister. It&amp;#039;s all one big happy family with a French accent, an English accent, a Spanish accent and an Indian accent. We&amp;#039;ll shoot for mid-Mediterranean somewhere!&amp;quot; Four Lions is out on Blu-ray and DVD now. Leave your comments on Four Lions in the space below! "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.digitalspy.com/movies/news/a272148/qa-riz-ahmed-chats-four-lions/>