Star Wars Fans Almost Caused The Man Who Played Jar Jar Binks To End His Life

With The Mandalorian & Grogu hitting theaters this weekend, it is time we had a discussion that is long overdue. Do ya’ll remember Ahmed Best and how much that man was forced to endure?

No? Let’s talk about it.

The year was 1999, and it seemed like everyone in the world was hype because we were getting something we had not in years: a new Star Wars movie. But there was one problem: it was underwhelming. (Actually, it sucked.) But there was one character in the film who embodied the problems almost everyone had with the movie: Jar Jar Binks. This is where Banks enters the picture.

Ahmed Best played Jar Jar through motion-capture performance and voice acting. On set for the movie, he wore a prosthetic headpiece and acted alongside the cast so animators could model Jar Jar’s movements and expressions around what he was doing in the scene. Things got dark once Star Wars fans saw the movie because Jar Jar Binks became something of a lightning rod.

The character’s slapstick humor clashed with the tone of the movie. But what really got people heated was Binks’ exaggerated mannerisms and comic incompetence. Those echoed long-standing stereotypes that were historically used to mock Black and Caribbean people in film.

Best was forced to shoulder the blame for that character. He was the subject of merciless online harassment, racist criticism, and mockery over the character’s voice, mannerisms, and comic role in the film.

Years later, he revealed how devastating the experience was for him. “I almost ended my life,” Best admitted in a 2018 Instagram post reflecting on the aftermath of the backlash. “But I survived.” He further reflected on the emotional toll of the backlash in a 2019 interview saying, “I was just alone and the depression hit me. Hard. I was just broken… I felt like people blamed me for ruining their childhood.” He also said “I was called every racial stereotype you can imagine.” And concluded “My career began and ended with Star Wars.”

He got all the hate, but he was unfairly targeted. Why? Because Ahmed Best did not invent the character Jar Jar Binks.

George Lucas wrote the character as exaggerated comic relief and directed the broad, cartoonish tone audiences saw in The Phantom Menace. Best, a trained dancer and performer, helped shape Jar Jar’s physical movements and energy, but it was Lucas who directed him to act that way.

The tragedy of Jar Jar Binks is not that the character annoyed people. It’s not even that it might have embodied racial sterotypes, which I can soo how someone might think that. What is really sad is that audiences decided the man beneath the CGI deserved punishment for it.