Jar Jar Binks voice actor Ahmed Best has revealed how the abuse he received took him to the “lowest I’ve ever been”.
Following the release of the Star Wars prequel The Phantom Menace in 1999, fan reaction to his character was severe and led to websites such as JarJarSucks.com and JarJarBinksMustDie.com springing up.
Best’s phone number was eventually leaked online, and death threats were left on his answering machine, according to the actor.
Speaking in a new interview in The Guardian, he said he was scared to leave his New York apartment, adding: “It was terrible. It was the lowest I’ve been in my life.”
Back in 2018, the actor revealed that the backlash to his appearance in the film led him to contemplate taking his own life. “I don’t talk a lot about my experience as #jarjarbinks because a lot of it is very painful,” he wrote in an Instagram post at the time. “I faced a media backlash that still affects my career today.”
“This was the place I almost ended my life,” he continued, under a photo of him and his son next to the Brooklyn Bridge in New York City. “It’s still hard to talk about. I survived and now this little guy is my gift for survival.”
Speaking to The Guardian now, Best said of the incident at the time: “[I 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.”
He has since appeared in a trailer for Star Wars game show Star Wars: Jedi Temple Challenge and more recently he played the character Kelleran Beq in The Mandalorian.
Speaking about that appearance, he added: “It really felt good. As an artist, I lost my confidence for so many years, but The Mandalorian gave me that affirmation of ‘You were always doing the right thing … It wasn’t you.’”
Meanwhile, it was recently confirmed that Donald Glover and his brother Stephen are set to write the forthcoming Lando series for Disney+.
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