Riz Ahmed, the voice actor for Sir Ballister Blackheart in the new Netflix queer movie ‘Nimona’, said that he didn’t have to see the script before accepting the role.
In an interview with PRIDE, Ahmed revealed that it only needed a conversation with directors Nick Bruno and Troy Quane to get his yes. He fell in love with both characters and the message of the show!
“They really just kind of pitched to me their vision for the story and for this character, in a way that I just found really moving. They just spoke about Ballister on such a human level about someone who was misunderstood, to begin with — and that only gets worse as things go on,” he told PRIDE.
‘Nimona’ started streaming last June 30, and it has received a lot of positive feedback since its release. It is based on Stevenson’s comics which follow the story of a shape-shifting girl (Nimona) who becomes the sidekick for Ahmed’s character, Ballister Blackheart, a reluctant supervillain and knight framed for a crime he didn’t actually commit. Blackheart used to date his fellow knight-turned-archenemy Sir Ambrosius Goldenlion, voiced by Eugene Lee Yang.
Blackheart’s struggle for acceptance, especially after all the bad things that have happened to him, is one that Ahmed really related to a lot.
