Ahmed Best recently spoke with People about the breakout role that set his career on a difficult path.
Best, 50, voiced the role of Jar Jar Binks in George Lucas' three Star Wars prequels. Following the theatrical release of Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace in 1999, the actor went through what he called "the first textbook case of cyber bullying" with people not only hating on his character but also attacking him as a person.
"Everybody came for me," he remembered. "I'm the first person to do this kind of work, but I was also the first Black person, Black man."
Jar Jar Binks was the first character created through motion-capture technology to be prominently featured in a live-action film.
"It really wasn't easy," Best reflected. "I was very young. I was 26. And it's hard to have this idea that the thing you've been working all your life for, you finally get it and you're finally in the big leagues and the highest level of the game, and you hold your own. All of these years you're just like, 'I belong at the top of the game. I belong at the highest level.'"
Best, who'd been a cast member of Stomp, said he was "ostracized" by Hollywood due to the negativity towards Jar Jar Binks, even though The Phantom Menace—the first new Star Wars film in 16 years—eclipsed $1 billion at the worldwide box office.
"And then all of a sudden people pull the rug out from under you. And I was just like, 'What is happening now?' My career began and ended," he said. "I didn't know what to do, and unfortunately there was really no one that could help me, because it was such a unique position; it had never happened before in history."
Best revealed in 2019 that the negativity reached a point where he contemplated suicide. "I felt tired of having to explain myself. I felt tired of having to defend myself and defend my work," he said in the video below. "I felt tired of having to fight back against racism and the racial stereotypes. I just wanted to play a part. I was exhausted."
"I didn't want to hurt my family like that," Best said of that moment. "So it was something bigger than me that made me walk away. I still was lost. I still couldn't find my footing, and I just felt the injustice of it all. How could I have achieved such a wonderful thing, and then nothing? Nothing. I was longing to continue. I wanted to continue this work. I wanted to continue moving in this direction and seeing what the CGI thing could turn into."
Best returned to the world of Star Wars last year, playing Jedi Master Kelleran Beq in an episode of the hit Disney+ series The Mandalorian. He previously played Beq in the 2020 game show Star Wars: Jedi Temple Challenge.
Despite everything he went through with Jar Jar Binks, he is open to revisiting the character as long as he can provide "some really good closure."
"I would love just for there to be some really good closure, just to know what happened to Jar Jar. And then I don't think it needs to be tragic," he told People. "There was this one piece of Star Wars literature where Jar Jar ended up being this homeless clown in the streets begging for money or something like that. And I was like, 'I don't think so. I don't think that's Jar Jar's fate.'"
"Jar Jar was spectacularly clumsy and failed upwards," he continued. "He was just a wonderful character that always found a way to succeed. And I would love to know Jar Jar's fate from there, even if it's a scene that closes it."
This fall's Lego Star Wars: Rebuild the Galaxy on Disney+ won't give Jar Jar a proper canonical sendoff, but it will bring back Best to voice the role and give life to a fan theory/joke: Darth Jar Jar. "Been holding on to this one for a long time. For those who have been wondering, YES, a [Sith Lord Darth Jar Jar] lives," Best wrote on Instagram sharing the teasers.
The actor told People he believes being transparent about what he went through was cathartic, but also necessary because "no one should ever have to feel like that."
“I had to let this out. I had to let people know that this happened. This was a thing," he said. "Because no one should ever have to feel like that, to that extreme.”
Ahead of its 25th anniversary on May 19, Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace is playing in theaters now. Last weekend it was No. 2 at the domestic box office behind The Fall Guy, making $8.7 million.
