“I didn’t want to hurt my family like that,” Best said of that moment. “So it was something bigger than me that made me walk away. I still was lost. I still couldn’t find my footing, and I just felt the injustice of it all. How could I have achieved such a wonderful thing, and then nothing? Nothing. I was longing to continue. I wanted to continue this work. I wanted to continue moving in this direction and seeing what the CGI thing could turn into.”
Best returned to the world of Star Wars last year, playing Jedi Master Kelleran Beq in an episode of the hit Disney+ series The Mandalorian. He previously played Beq in the 2020 game show Star Wars: Jedi Temple Challenge.
Despite everything he went through with Jar Jar Binks, he is open to revisiting the character as long as he can provide “some really good closure.”
“I would love just for there to be some really good closure, just to know what happened to Jar Jar. And then I don’t think it needs to be tragic,” he told People. “There was this one piece of Star Wars literature where Jar Jar ended up being this homeless clown in the streets begging for money or something like that. And I was like, ‘I don’t think so. I don’t think that’s Jar Jar’s fate.'”
“Jar Jar was spectacularly clumsy and failed upwards,” he continued. “He was just a wonderful character that always found a way to succeed. And I would love to know Jar Jar’s fate from there, even if it’s a scene that closes it.”
This fall’s Lego Star Wars: Rebuild the Galaxy on Disney+ won’t give Jar Jar a proper canonical sendoff, but it will bring back Best to voice the role and give life to a fan theory/joke: Darth Jar Jar. “Been holding on to this one for a long time. For those who have been wondering, YES, a [Sith Lord Darth Jar Jar] lives,” Best wrote on Instagram sharing the teasers.
