Riz Ahmed and Richard Ayoade can’t quite believe their luck

The cast from Wes Anderson’s new film, The Phoenician Scheme, are gathered in the Marriott Hotel in Cannes. It’s a building of sickening (in both senses of the term) opulence on the famous Croisette, the road that stretches along a glimmering coast down to the red carpet of the festival. Anderson, who once set a whole film inside a hotel, would probably know what to do with this place; as I talk to his actors, I occasionally imagine the symmetrical fixed shots and crash pans his camera would employ to film us.

The Phoenician Scheme is a formidable black comedy which tells the story of a filthy rich businessman (Benicio Del Toro) who appoints his estranged nun daughter Liesl (Mia Threapleton) as the heir to his estate. The pair are subsequently chased by a motley crew of spies, enemies (one of them played by Richard Aoyade) and associates (one of them played Michael Cera, head over heels for Liesl; the other by Riz Ahmed) as they attempt to preserve his fortune.

Richard Ayoade and Riz Ahmed, a double act in this interview, sit back and shoot the breeze, barely needing any questions to spur them along. Both seem irradiated with enthusiasm for the film they have made and artlessly content to promote it, holed up in suites turned into workspaces, while the sun beats down outside.

Have you ever done a publicity junket like this before?

Richard: No, this is my first one.

I’ve never done one before either.

Riz: Maybe you could turn this into a profile – Riz and Rich. Does anyone ever call you Rich?

Richard: Not really. I think if anything people try and make my name longer.

Did you impose that? I always appreciate it if people manage to keep their full name, like Richard or Catherine or Samuel.

Riz: Well, you’re embarrassing me, because Riz isn’t my full name.

Oh right, what is it? Rizwan?

Riz: Exactly, but it’s something I’m kind of thinking about…

Re-extending?

Riz: Well, definitely in my personal life, yeah.

Richard: I think that’s good. Also… (pushing a bowl towards me) these are very good nuts.

Thank you. So how did you come to be in the film?

Riz: I got an email from Wes, saying, ​“Hey, are you free in Germany for two weeks, I’ve got a role for you and would love you to come and be in this thing.” I’d emailed him once before that a few years ago, as a fan, and thought nothing would ever come of it. So I was very touched that he thought of me, and excited. And I knew that Benicio del Toro was in it, and I’m a huge fan of Benicio’s, so that combo of Wes and Benicio, I thought, yeah, I’m in. Now tell me what it is.

Was it the same for you, Richard?

Richard: Yeah, I got an email about it. I’d worked once with Wes before, and I’d been in touch with him because he and Noah Baumbach did a screening of a film I directed, Submarine, in New York. Ben Stiller was the executive producer on the film and he had done The Royal Tenenbaums with him. And Wes would send very kind messages about the couple of films I did [after that], so, it started with knowing how supportive he was in general.

What was it like working with Wes and getting into his universe? How do you create a character within that space?

Riz: Sometimes having those parameters, and those outside things taken care of, can really free you up. The idea of growing a character out of psychological realism is a very recent and specific approach. It means everyone on set can free themselves up with the delivery of dialogue and have the confidence to deliver what they have to with simplicity rather than spending ages working out, like, I’ve got to sit down here, I’ve got to move here, and how shall we frame that? Because so much of that is taken care of. It’s quite a pure experience.

Do you have any feelings about any possible political resonance in the film? I asked Michael Cera about it and he said no.

Riz: Tell me what you mean.

Well, it’s a story set in the Middle East, and there’s a bunch of people having arguments over financial considerations, how they’re going to divvy it up. I think it does speak to the moment.

Richard: Yeah, I think anything that’s truthful does speak to the moment and so I think a film like this will not lose relevance. And it doesn’t come from a place of didacticism, it’s an extremely hopeful film about reconciliation. I think it’s a line from La Collectioneuse — ​“I will not become mixed up in your schemes.” And I think it’s about the way people will try to instrumentalise others in their schemes, and realising that relationships aren’t a zero sum.

The push-and-pull of Wes Anderson’s work lately seems to be between a humanity bursting through a quite constructed set-up. And this film comes back to the parent-child dynamic you find in so many of his films.

Riz: Those parameters can actually be liberating – and in the same way, because a story is told in such a particular way, I don’t think that stops emotion coming through. It’s like a kind of Brechtian effect, where there’s an alienation in the fact that you’re aware you’re watching a movie, but because of that, it’s a bit more confronting. You’re asking yourself a bit more actively, ​“Well, the filmmaker is putting their hands out here in plain view, so what am I being asked to examine and investigate?” In a weird way, it demands more active viewing.

A director of a Brecht play came to talk to my school when I was a teenager, and we asked him about working with actors, and he said, ​“Actors are nothing, they’re just puppets.”

Riz: Which is actually the total opposite of what Brecht’s idea was: that his ensemble and a lot of that work was about the actor having to be someone who’s socially and politically engaged, and understand they’re serving the community.

Richard: And serving something bigger than yourself, otherwise it just becomes forcing everyone to watch your emotional problems.

Riz: Which is what we have social media for.