Riz Ahmed's Rogue One health scare shaped his role choices

Riz Ahmed said he suffered a serious, mysterious health scare while filming Rogue One that left him briefly hospitalized, forced him to rebuild his strength and ultimately influenced his choice of roles. Speaking on the Podcrushed podcast, the actor said the episode unfolded during the production of the Star Wars spinoff and that his body "just kind of gave up on me," leaving him "extremely exhausted" and wondering if he would get his life back.

Ahmed, who played pilot Bodhi Rook in Rogue One, said he was hospitalized for a short period and thereafter had to "really try and retrain my strength. It was like building myself up from scratch." He declined to specify a diagnosis, describing the episode only as "something very silent and very intense" whose cause "really wasn't clear" and which did not resolve quickly. He also did not say how the illness affected day-to-day shooting or the film's later promotion.

The experience, Ahmed said, brought a mixture of terror and unexpected clarity. He described confronting "a deep kind of grief and fear and terror, and yet also a kind of tremendous kind of liberation and gratitude and acceptance." He reflected, "You don't control a single...