Star Wars actor reflects on how online abuse & reaction to his Jar Jar Binks role had him consider suicide

[get these nets]

*Episode 3 covered backlash from racists and star wars loonies, this episode covers him being called a sellout

‘The lowest I’ve ever been’: how playing Jar Jar Binks led to abuse, near death – and saving Baby Yoda

Ahmed Best thought he’d made it big when cast as Jar Jar Binks in Star Wars: The Phantom Menace. But it turned into a nightmare of online abuse and accusations of racism. With a new podcast revisiting his story, the actor talks about why he’s still proud of his historic role

www.theguardian.com

Even before The Phantom Menace was released, Best tuned in to Conan O’Brien one night, only to find a discussion about how his character would “ruin the movie”. When it came out in 1999, reviews were not kind – and fan reactions were worse. Websites such as JarJarSucks.com or JarJarBinksMustDie.com started springing up. They hosted Photoshop mockups of Binks and Best’s severed heads. Some users called for Binks’s entire race to suffer a horrific genocide. There was Jar Jar porn and homophobic abuse. There were so many hate sites that it created a “web ring” of linked pages that anti-Jar Jar activists could travel between.

The press started reporting on the online hatred, driving it to new heights. Best’s phone number was leaked online, and his answering machine overflowed with death threats. He returned to Stomp and became reluctant to even leave his New York apartment. “It was terrible,” says Best. “It was the lowest I’ve been in my life.”

Ahmed Best with podcast host

The trickiest part of the podcast is broaching one of the biggest criticisms of Jar Jar Binks. After the release of The Phantom Menace, film critics, professors and media scholars all claimed that he was racially offensive. They highlighted his subservience to white characters, interpreted his long ears as dreadlocks and claimed that he spoke in “demeaning pidgin English that will give many older viewers an unfortunate reminder of Hollywood’s more blatant racial stereotypes”. Everyone involved in the character’s creation, including Best, deny there was any offensive intent. But Marron hands the mic to Black film critic Aisha Harris to let her explain how, deliberate or not, it’s all too easy to read Binks as a trope known as the “noble savage”.

For Best, the accusation of racism was devastating. As someone extremely proud of his African heritage and a passionate advocate of Black rights, it was the suggestion that he’d allowed himself to be exploited that drove him to the edge of Brooklyn Bridge.