Ahmed Best Reveals Why There’s a Jar Jar Renaissance With Star Wars Fans

Actor Ahmed Best is amazed that his character Jar Jar Binks is seeing a surge in popularity these days, but he claims that Star Wars mastermind George Lucas saw it coming from the start. Best played the prequel trilogy’s divisive sidekick with motion-capture and voice-over acting, and he has been very candid about how the fandom’s general hatred for the character impacted him personally. Nowadays, Jar Jar is met with more pleasant nostalgia from fans, and Best has definitely noticed. In an interview with ComicBook at Star Wars Celebration, Best explained that Lucas saw this coming from the start.

“Yeah! I mean, that’s pretty incredible to me, but I think it’s because all of the kids who loved Jar Jar are now adults, and now they have kids,” he said. “So, Jar Jar was a lot of peoples’ entry into the Star Wars universe, and those folks who grew up with Jar Jar — that’s their Star Wars, just like A New Hope, Empire, Jedi were my Star Wars. So, it kind of is natural that there is this new renaissance, and to be honest, George saw this coming. He was very much a futurist, so he knew that 20 years later, it was going to turn out like this.”

Best agreed that the fandom’s gradual acceptance of Jar Jar is similar to the response to Ewoks. Those characters were despised by some viewers at the time, who felt like they were too cute for the climactic battle of Return of the Jedi. However, they were beloved by children seeing them for the first time, and in hindsight, few people would say they’re out place.

[RELATED: Star Wars: The Phantom Menace’s Ahmed Best Shares Favorite Movie Memory, Thanks Jar Jar Fans in New Video]

“I love the Ewoks, I never knew that there was a problem with the Ewoks,” Best admitted. “But things transform.”

Best was 24 years old when he took the role of Jar Jar Binks, which was a huge break for him. He would later tell interviewers that he felt he had put a lot of his own personality into the character, and when the backlash began, he found it hard to compartmentalize it. He interpreted it as attacks on himself, and he disclosed that he even had suicidal thoughts during this period.

There’s a lot more to the story of Jar Jar and the Star Wars fandom, with elements of racism to consider as well. However, Best has been able to move past that in part because of his new role as Jedi Master Kelleran Beq, who appeared in The Mandalorian Season 3. Best told us he is still excited to take the role further and show off more of his own martial arts prowess in the process.

Best’s performances in the Star Wars prequel trilogy and The Mandalorian Season 3 are all streaming now on Disney+. Best has no more upcoming roles listed on IMDb at the time of this writing.