Interpreter of Jar Jar Binks in “The Phantom Menace”, actor Ahmed Best recently spoke about his memories of the Star Wars saga and in particular the violent reception from fans regarding his character when the film was released.
25 years ago, George Lucas offered his fans a new journey into the galaxy far, far away from the Star Wars saga, and offered them the opportunity to discover – through three new episodes – the origins of their favorite characters.
Now largely rehabilitated, this prelogy received a sometimes mixed reception upon its release. An animosity that the filmmaker recently mentioned during his visit to Cannes, and which mainly focused on the character of Jar Jar Binks. This clumsy and clumsy Gungan, designed to serve as a humorous endorsement for the film, and played (for the first time in the history of cinema) by an actor in motion capture, had in fact concentrated almost all the anger of the fans.
This cold and sometimes violent reception, the actor Ahmed Best who played the character suffered enormously, as he recently told at the microphone of People.
“We were in our bubble while shooting the film.”
“We were in our bubble while shooting the film”he confided, before returning to the disappointment that the release of The Phantom Menace had represented for him.
“So when I came out of that bubble, I said to myself that everyone is going to appreciate what we had done, because if people felt the same way as we had felt when we created [le film], it was going to be incredible. But there were already some kinds of preconceived ideas, and this hatred online, which was already starting to bubble up. People were already talking about it before the movie even came out.”
Lucasfilm Ltd.
Ahmed Best continued his story by describing the helplessness and loneliness in which he found himself at the time. Indeed, being the first actor to truly test motion capture, he didn’t really have any counterparts with whom to share his painful experience.
“There was really no one who could help me.”
“It really wasn’t easy. I was very young. I was 26 years old. (…) All these years you think you’ve made it to the top, you’ve reached the highest level, and then all of a sudden people pull the rug out from under you. I wondered what would happen to me next. My career ended where it began. I didn’t know what to do, and unfortunately, there really wasn’t anyone who could help me, because my position was unique. This has never happened before in history.”
As he had already told previously, the actor once again explained that at that time in his life, overwhelmed by all the criticism that was pouring out on his performance and on Jar Jar, he had assumed the worst.
“I didn’t want to hurt my family by doing this, so it was something bigger than myself that set me back. I was still lost. I still couldn’t find my balance, and I still felt all this injustice”he declared, always at the microphone of Peoplebefore explaining that he ended up rebuilding himself, leaving acting for good to serve as a lecturer at the University of Southern California.
(Re)discover all the hidden details in “The Phantom Menace”…