Jar Jar Binks Actor Reveals Backlash To ‘Star Wars’ Character Made Him Consider Taking His Own Life
deadline.comThe actor who played Jar Jar Binks has revealed the devastating personal toll of fans’ hatred of his Star Wars character. Ahmed Best thought all his dreams had come true when he was plucked from obscurity to play the gregarious creature in George Lucas’s Star Wars: Episode 1 – The Phantom Menace.
Best had been performing in a percussive dance troupe when he was selected to audition, but his lifelong dream had been to appear in a Star Wars movie… until the reality.
The actor told the UK’s Guardian newspaper how the wrath of the fans – who took against both the character and him – left him depressed and even, at one point, standing on the Brooklyn Bridge and considering taking his own life.
Best told the paper, he thought, “I’ll show all of you. I’ll show you what you’re doing to me. And when I’m gone, then you’ll feel exactly what I went through.” Best appears in a new podcast, The Redemption of Jar Jar Binks, detailing his initial excitement at winning the role. “I was an enormous Star Wars fan as a kid,” Best remembered in the podcast. “I didn’t know what was happening.
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