Raza Jaffrey

Raza Jaffrey is a British actor and singer. He is known for his roles as Zafar Younis in the BBC One spy drama series Spooks (2004–2007) and Neal Hudson in the CBS medical drama Code Black (2015). He also had a recurring role as Aasar Khan in season 4 of the Showtime series Homeland (2014). More recently, he appeared in the NBC series The Enemy Within (2019) and the Starz series The Serpent Queen (2022–). Early life and education Jaffrey was born in Liverpool, Merseyside. His father Hyder Jaffrey was born in Agra, then part of British India, and later moved to Pakistan after Partition. He emigrated to the UK in 1948 to train in the merchant navy and later became a captain. Hyder met Joan Bradshaw, an Irish Catholic Liverpudlian, in the early 1950s and they lived in Karachi, Pakistan, for a decade. The couple married in 1962 and had four children, of whom Raza was the youngest. He grew up in London and was educated at Dulwich College between 1986 and 1991, alongside actors Rupert Penry-Jones and Chiwetel Ejiofor. Jaffrey's initial career aspiration was to become a Royal Air Force pilot and he passed the entrance exams for it and went on to study English and Drama at Manchester University with the intention of gaining a degree to join officer training. However while at university, he became interested in acting and joined the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School after graduation.