Salon.com: In the latest installment of “These Are the Actors You’re Looking For”—a YouTube series wherein host Jamie Stangroom tracks down a different “unsung hero” from past “Star Wars” episodes—Stangroom spoke with Ahmed Best, who played Jar Jar Binks in “Phantom Menace.”
On the Jar Jar backlash, Best said, “It was painful.”
2 comments:
I'm so glad this article is on the blog this week. I've always wondered what it is like to play a character that is disliked by most everyone, and it's so interesting to put a real face behind the annoying character. I think it takes a certain higher level of dedication and love for performance to continue in a role that is so widely disliked. My roommate, who has never seen a Star Wars film, briefly saw Jar Jar on the screen when her boyfriend and I were watching Episode I, and all she said was, "Oh, that's the one everyone hates, right?" I think it's incredible that Best still defends his role. He sees the value in the character, and he doesn't give into the easy answer that, yes, Jar Jar is a little irritating to watch. In some ways, I think actors like Best have some of the hardest jobs. He has to ignore the immense amounts of hate for his character, and keep doing what he does best. I also think it's very interesting that Michael Jackson was considered for the role. I wonder if people would have been nicer about Jar Jar then.
There’s something about this interview that really sat with me for a bit. When he talks about how the movie was supposed to last 30 years, and that the role of Jar Jar was primarily for the children. Now, I’m one of those people who was a really young child when the Phantom Menace came out, and I remember watching it as a slightly less young a kid a few years after it had been released right when I hit that ‘Star Wars is awesome’ phase of my childhood, and I honestly don’t remember having any disdain or disappointment about Jar Jar. Now, fast forward a decade, and I’m re-watching all of the films so that I can be prepared to see The Force Awakens, and I get this weir mix of fury and sleepiness from watching the prequel trilogy. I certainly can’t take the movie seriously because of Jar Jar, and I remember thinking to myself, “How can something I thought was pretty awesome as a kid turn out to really be this disappointing?” So maybe that’s the 30 year legacy that Phantom Menace will get, it certainly seems like it, but I hope that at least in my mind I can find a middle ground between those two camps. Sometimes people get a little carried away (somewhat understandably so) with their Jar Jar hate, and this interview helps me understand where the creative decisions were coming from, making it harder to do that.
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