One foggy night at 3am, the actor who plays Jar Jar Binks in Star Wars found himself clinging to the edge of Brooklyn Bridge. An instant ago, he had been on the public walkway, but now he was teetering on its brink. As the breeze blew around him, he gazed out at the Statue of Liberty. 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. I’ll show you what you’re doing to me. And when I’m gone, then you’ll feel exactly what I went through.”
This is the lowest moment of new TED-produced podcast The Redemption of Jar Jar Binks. 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. 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’s quite the journey.
