Tom Hanks is hip.
The actor appeared on BBC’s The One Show, where he was asked what he thinks about the word rizz.
“‘Rizz’ as in short for ‘charisma’?” he asked. “Well, I think if you claim to have rizz, you don’t have rizz. It’s gotta be placed upon you.”
George Clooney chimed in as well: “I think that’s right.” Callum Turner, who was also on the show, also agreed, saying, “That means they have rizz.”
“Well, that’s the other thing too,” Hanks continued. “If you make that statement, then you clearly have rizz.” Clooney added, “Once you’ve said it, you’re literally the poster child for rizz.”
If you don’t know what rizz is, you’re probably a normal human with no time for internet shenanigans. The word first popped up on Twitch and YouTube in the last couple of years before making its way to TikTok but was popularized by Twitch streamer Kai Cenat.
Cenat eloquently described rizz on No Jumper in 2022. “Rizz is when you’re talking to a girl, and at first, shit is not going your way. It’s looking bad for you, until you spit game and you’re rizzing them up to where shit starts to go your way,” he explained. “You’re so slick with your words and what you’re saying, to where the girl is like, ‘OK, yeah, who is this?!’ After shit goes your way, you’re like, ‘Yeah, I rizzed her up. I’ve got mad rizz.’”
However, he stopped using the word after some time, saying TikTok “butchered” the word: "They killed it.”
