Jar Jar Binks actor Ahmed Best explains how fan negativity nearly led him to suicide

The second recently published season of Disney + Docuseries Light and magic Exalt in the way advancement technology improves all the programs and films we love. But behind the 0 and 1 of the company based on George Lucas, Industrial Light & Magic are the people who use their brains and their hearts so that everything happens. One moves away from this documentation, part 1 led by Lawrence Kasdan, part 2 of Joe Johnston, really impressed by the creativity overflowing with a group which may seem, at the beginning, as just a bunch of computer jockeys.

A large part of the second episode of the second season is devoted to a potentially controversial subject among the whole of hardcore fans: the genesis and the reaction to Jar Jar Binks.

The Daffy, Clummsy Gungan was a major breakthrough for the characters generated by computer, but the public’s reaction was (and it is an understatement) mixed When he hit screens for the first time in 1999 Star Wars: Episode 1 – The Phantom Menace. Indeed, some members of the press were so impatient to throw rocks into the pot of pure-or-head pot, they forgot that he represented the hard work of real people.

While the veterinarian of the industry George Lucas raised his shoulders with ease, remembering how people felt that the C-3P0 was “boring and stupid” in the first Star WarsAnd to say that “80% of people in the film industry are ransacked [by the press]“It was a cold comfort for Rob Coleman from Ilm and, more devastating, the young actor Ahmed Best, whose voice and performance capture was transformed into what we see on the screen.

With a degree of emotion, the best reminders, more than 25 years later, how much he was injured in negativity. The press junkets came with questions busy on its history, the first websites were devoted to the hatred of Jar Jar, and there were erroneous interpretations on the character’s intentions.

“I thought it was my fault,” he said. “I was 26 years old. What should have looked like the beginning of something very wonderful looked like the end.”

He then explained how, on an unusually motionless and calm night in New York, he ended up on the bridge of Brooklyn, not even remembering how he got there.

“I just remember myself outside the bridge, pressing one of the big pillars,” he recalls. “I see the statue of freedom, and what I think is: ‘I will show each of them what you have done to me. I will make sure that each of you do what you have done to me.

Fortunately, fate, or something, has intervened.

“I rely on the bridge and I get closer and get closer to go-being free from all the words and people,” he shared. “Then from nowhere, Whoosh, a gust of wind blows me.”

He continued: “I lose my balance and I caught the side of the bridge. Then I laughed:” What are you doing? What are you doing? “”

He explained that suddenly he was very afraid, which was good. “I became happy to be afraid,” he said. “It meant that I wanted to live.”

He concluded that “the lesson that has been learned for all those who make CGI characters now is to talk about the actor – not just the character, as the actors do not exist.”

As Lucas predicted a Coleman at the bottom of the 10th anniversary, in 1999, would occur to be adults to claim Jar Jar as their favorite character. And indeed, it happened. The sequence in Light and magic ends with the best celebrated in a current Star Wars Convention.

But there is another treat of information. Even back when the Star Wars The prequelles were criticized in some quarters, all agreed that the Laser Backup between Yoda and Count Dooku Episode II – Attack of clones was (in language) epic. It turns out that the best was the clutch to help all this gets together.

Lucas gave the team effects little advice other than “you will think of something” and “like the Tasmanian devil” when you describe how the Jedi Master Yoda, that we had never really seen move Before, engages in combat. While Coleman was scratching his head, the best, a martial artist, invited him “back to the cradle” and nourished him videos of anime, films by Bruce Lee and, in particular, Swordsman II With Jet Li. See the way the samurai jumped and turned was the inspiration Coleman needed.

And the best also made him promise that we would get a cool photo of Yoda taking his combat position, which inspired one of the greatest cheers of the public when the film was released.

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Discover the trailer for season 2 of Light and magic below.

If you or someone you know are considering suicide, please contact the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline by composing 988, “Force” texture with the line of crisis text at 741741 or go to 988lifeline.org.