Ahmed Best, who played Jar Jar Bins in "The Phatom Menace," was recently interviewed by The Wrap and revealed the very dark and depressing days he had some 20 odd years ago when "The Phantom Menace" was released to major fan backlash. In fact, Best was so depressed that he actually contemplated killing himself.
“20 years next year I faced a media backlash that still affects my career today.This was the place I almost ended my life. It’s still hard to talk about. I survived and now this little guy is my gift for survival.”
“There were a lot of tears, there was a lot of pain, there was a lot of shit I had to deal with. Everybody else went on. Everybody else worked. Everybody else was accepted by the zeitgeist. To be honest, failing and being black is very scary, because we don’t get a lot of chances, you know? I didn’t get another chance after Jar Jar.”
Best's story clearly didn't sit well with "Guardians of the Galaxy" director James Gunn who quickly went to Twitter to rant, and what a rant it was:
“People responding to this post saying, ‘Yeah, it wasn’t the actor’s fault! It was the writer’s!’ are missing the point,” Gunn said. “Critique it. Don’t like it. But spewing hate and bile at individuals just doing their best to tell a story, even if the story sucks, is lame. Don’t watch it!”
‘Star Wars’ (or any movie) may be important to you, but it doesn’t belong to you. If your self-esteem depends on how good you think the current ‘Star Wars’ is, or your childhood is ruined because you don’t like something in a movie, GO TO THERAPY.
Best isn't the only "Phantom Menace" casualty. I'm sure you all remember 10 year-old Jake Lloyd, who played Anakin Skywalker, and his revelation in a 2012 interview that fan backlash led him to quit acting for good. It didn't stop there, Lloyd also ended up having a short stint at a psychiatric facility. Yikes.
Jar Jar Binks became the laughingstock of many "Star Wars" fans in the summer of 1999. However, I, for the life of me, could not tell you how Ahmed Best looks like or that he even played Jar Jar. I'm assuming hardcore SW fans must have known who he was, but wasn't his performance CGI/motion capture?
Jake Lloyd's story, however, is horribly sad. People went after a little kid.