![]() Soon, he was on set with Hollywood megastars, driving around with George Lucas – who became almost a mentor to him – and filming a role that effectively invented motion capture. He got the part as Jar Jar Binks’s body – the basis for the CGI animations that formed the character – only to talk the production into giving him a spoken role, using a voice he’d previously invented to entertain his young cousins. He turned up, walked through a faux-Victorian mansion filled with display cases containing original lightsabers, and was asked to try out for a role in new Star Wars prequel The Phantom Menace – which involved acting like a salamander. “I didn’t know what was happening,” says Best. ![]() When he found out it would be at George Lucas’s Skywalker Ranch the next day, it blew his mind. After one show, he was approached by a casting director who wanted him to audition for a role. “I loved it so much that my mom went to the fabric store and made Star Wars pillowcases for us, Star Wars sheets, Star Wars clothes.” A couple of decades later, the actor and martial artist was performing with percussive dance troupe Stomp. “I was an enormous Star Wars fan as a kid,” says Best, speaking from LA (the Hollywood actors’ strike doesn’t apply to documentary podcasts). We hear him go from being on the cover of Vanity Fair alongside Natalie Portman, Liam Neeson and Ewan McGregor to receiving death threats – only to make an astonishing comeback. It tells the story of Ahmed Best, who played what was meant to be one of Star Wars’ most exciting new characters, only to end up being the first ever recipient of a torrent of online abuse that spilled over into worldwide press coverage. This is the lowest moment of new TED-produced podcast The Redemption of Jar Jar Binks. ![]() And when I’m gone, then you’ll feel exactly what I went through.” He saw the river below, and as he hung precariously above a 39m drop, one thing kept going through his mind: “I’ll show all of you. ![]() As the breeze blew around him, he gazed out at the Statue of Liberty. An instant ago, he had been on the public walkway, but now he was teetering on its brink. One foggy night at 3am, the actor who plays Jar Jar Binks in Star Wars found himself clinging to the edge of Brooklyn Bridge. ![]()
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