🎙️ “Privilege is waking up without thinking of your identity”: Fuzz Ali on Belonging and Being Off-Centre

🖋️ A word from our editor…

I’ve known Fuzz for a little while now, and he’s always been someone I’ve felt really comfortable around. He’s thoughtful in a very natural, unforced way—and when he talks, you get the sense that he’s spent a lot of time figuring out who he is and what matters to him. 

This conversation covers a lot—identity, growing up between cultures, grief, wellness, community, the stories we carry from childhood. And throughout the interview, there’s this quiet through-line: how hard it can be to feel like you belong, and how powerful it is when you stop trying to fit in and start making space instead.

What I appreciate most is how open he is about not having it all figured out. There’s no pretending here—just a very thoughtful person sharing what it’s like to keep learning, to keep growing, and to keep showing up in the world as fully as he can.

I’m really grateful to Fuzz for this one. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

— Hao Nguyen, Editor

🍳 “I’ve always felt a bit different.”

For Fuzz Ali, identity was never a single story. Born in Australia, raised in Fiji, and now living in Sydney, his sense of self has been shaped by movement—between cultures, expectations, and the idea of belonging.

“I had a unique experience,” he told Amy and Jono on No Business Being a Castano. “My frame of reference for culture was Fijian, but it was also sort of Australian. And then it was also sort of Kiwi.” Add to that the layers of queerness, being an only child, and coming from “a family where a lot of the men… passed away fairly young,” and you get a life lived with both tenderness and hyper-awareness.

Throughout the episode, Fuzz returns to one theme: difference. Not as a burden, but as a point of connection. “What does it mean to be a person of colour? Or what does it mean to be a queer person? Or what does it mean to be a migrant? Or what does it mean to be bald? I don’t know. What does it mean to be fat or thin? What do any of these things mean?”

Even in his storytelling—through food, fashion, TV—he’s reclaiming space for Pacific voices. “Nobody talks about Pacific people… beyond, like, people being like, ‘Oh, you know, we’re bouncers and rugby players.’ But there’s a bigger story. We exist.”

He’s clear-eyed about the work still to be done. “Sometimes when people walk through the door, they close the door behind them. Just because you’ve got your lane of exclusion, it doesn’t mean that you have to be dismissive of other people’s experiences.”

For Fuzz, identity isn’t something to overcome—it’s something to deepen. “We should really be aiming to achieve a sense of wellness and wholeness and happiness for as long as we exist.”

And if the world doesn’t offer that? “We can bake a bigger fucking pie.”

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