Riz Ahmed has introduced his new girlfriend.
The actor, who revealed this week that he was secretly married, confirmed Wednesday’s episode of “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon” that he was marrying novelist Fatima Farheen Mirza.
Ahmed, 38, clarified that he was not trying to keep his marriage a secret.
“It’s weird, isn’t it? I guess because we live in an age of social media, if you don’t put yourself in the megaphone about things like that, it’s a secret, but I never know how much is being shared, ”he told Fallon. “Anyway, I love matchas, but that never comes. I’m not a secret matcha latte drinker. ”
The couple initially met “at random” in a New York cafe while preparing their film “Sound of Metal,” in which they play a heavy metal drummer who begins to lose his hearing.
“We both sat at the same table in a cafeteria where we both showed up to write,” he said. “We were both looking for the same laptop connection point, as a very modern form of meeting, and we established a friendship and then reconnected.”
He said meeting Mirza at the time made the film much more special to him.
“Obviously, I first met Fatima and met so many people in the deaf community who have become friends. And there’s just something in this whole period around this life-changing film, ”he said.
As for the appearance of their secret wedding, Ahmed said they kept things small due to the pandemic.
“Obviously, it kept him very intimate and socially distanced. There was, almost no one, really, ”he said. “We did it in the back garden, which is nice in many ways. And I think the nicest thing about it was that you didn’t have 500 aunts hanging around you squeezing your cheeks. No lack of respect for aunts.
He went on to joke: “Asian weddings are great. You’ve always managed to get these people to crawl through the carpentries, which I think are probably impostors. They just smell like kebabs on the street and just walk around. ”
Initially, Ahmed broke the news of his wedding on the January 11 episode of Louis Theroux’s “Grounded” podcast, saying, “It’s the first time I’ve mentioned it in an interview. incredibly exciting “.
Mirza is known for her novel “A Place for Us”.