Riz Ahmed has revealed his new bride.
The actor, who revealed this week that he was secretly married, confirmed on Wednesday on the episode of “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon” that he married novelist Fatima Farheen Mirza.
Ahmed, 38, clarified that he was not trying to keep his marriage a secret.
It’s a weird one, isn’t it? I think because we live in an age of social media, if you don’t get on the megaphone about things, it’s a secret – but I never know how much too much is being shared, ”he told Fallon. ‘I like matcha lattes, but that never surfaces. I am not a secret matcha latte drinker. ”
The pair initially met “so randomly” in a New York cafe while preparing for his movie “Sound of Metal,” where he plays a heavy metal drummer who is starting to lose his ear.
“We were both sitting at the same table in a cafe where we both came to write,” he said. “We were both jostling over the same laptop socket, as a very modern way of meeting, and we befriended and then reconnected.”
He said meeting Mirza at the time made the film much more special for him.
“It is clear that I met Fatima for the first time and met so many people in the deaf community who have become friends. And there’s just something about this whole period around this movie that was a little bit life-changing, ”he said.
As for what their secret wedding looked like, Ahmed said they kept things small because of the pandemic.
“It was clearly super intimate and socially distant. There was hardly anyone there, ”he said. “We did it in a backyard, which is nice in many ways. And I think the best thing about it was that you don’t have 500 aunts around you squeezing your cheeks. No disrespect for the aunts. “
He went on jokingly, “Asian weddings are big. You’ve always let these people crawl out of the woodwork, who I think are probably impostors. They just smell the kebabs in the street and just wander in. ”
Ahmed initially announced the news of his wedding on the Jan. 11 episode of Louis Theroux’s “Grounded” podcast, saying, “It’s the first time I’ve ever mentioned it in an interview. So congratulations on this incredibly exciting first.”
Mirza is known for her novel ‘A Place for Us’.