He’s the star and creator of the BBC hit Juice, but life has thrown him a few curveballs along the way. He opens up about his years of hard graft, his mum’s big acting break, and why things are getting weird with his therapist
I
don’t know if I’ve even really celebrated it to be honest, man.” Sitting in a north London bar on a boiling hot evening, resplendent in a matching silk shirt and shorts combo, Mawaan Rizwan is contemplating his life post-Bafta. In May last year, he won best male comedy performance for Juice, his gloriously surrealist BBC series in which he stars as Jamma, a clownish manchild with a bowl cut navigating a chaotic life alongside his dysfunctional family and buttoned-up older boyfriend.
In the end, after a few sips of his negroni, Rizwan – whose CV also includes appearances on Taskmaster, Live at the Apollo and Doctor Who, plus a slew of comedy songs about racism, toxic masculinity and skiing’s lack of socioeconomic diversity – pinpoints one way his life has changed; his therapist upped his fee. Rizwan speculates that it might have happened after his viral acceptance speech, in which the surprised and elated actor recounted a prior session’s focus on the dangers of relying on external forms of validation.
