Issues with fetching user roles for use in route access control

my RoleMiddleware below does not return the user's roles

public function handle($request, Closure $next, $role, $guard = null)
    {
        if (Auth::guard($guard)->guest()) {
            throw UnauthorizedException::notLoggedIn();
        }

        $roles = is_array($role)
            ? $role
            : explode('|', $role);
        if (! Auth::guard($guard)->user()->hasAnyRole($roles)) {
            throw UnauthorizedException::forRoles($roles);
        }

        return $next($request);
    }

I have added everything correctly to the route and I can't seem to understand why the roles connected to a particular user does not get returned.