Jar Jar Binks Actor Reflects on Backlash to Phantom Menace: ‘My Career Began and Ended’ with Star Wars

14 comments

1. > “Everybody came for me,” he recalls, as Phantom Menace returns to theaters for its 25th anniversary. “I’m the first person to do this kind of work, but I was also the first Black person, Black man.”

2. I liked Jar Jar.

3. Jar Jar annoyed the shit out of me, but even as a kid I understood he was meant to be comedic relief and not taken critically.

4. He seems like a really nice guy who got a raw deal. That said, Jar Jar is a laughably terrible character.

5. Learning that the voice he used for Jar Jar was the one he would use to read bedtime stories to his nephew had me regretting all the vitriol I expressed for the character. Everything wrong with TPM can be laid at Lucas’s feet and no one else.

6. Wish I could tell him my little daughter saw it in theaters last night and loves jar jar.

7. Look at that neck!

8. Jar Jar going full flex by forcing a vote and giving Papa Palpatine supreme control. Sith Jar Jar ✊🏽

9. I loved Jar Jar when the movie came out. I was 9

10. This guy seems cool and did a bang-up job for what he was going for I guess.

    Imagine being such a Nickelback?
    Immensely well known universally hated.

11. Article Summary: He was never able to move on from the character. He would find himself at the grocery store saying “ex-squeeeeze me?”. He would get stuck in the mindset of Jar-Jar for years waking up on the middle of the night to find himself in his backyard looking for frogs in the window well…Hollywood wouldn’t hire him because of the rumors…and his wife eventually left him due to her strong anti-Gungan beliefs🤧

12. [Say something fucking nice about Jar-Jar Binks](https://youtu.be/B8K9jAJ3Ong?si=qkkahLo3lGUG5FeX)

13. Jar jar is fine. The movies before this had Ewoks which are just as silly.

14. I hated Har Jar, but I never once blamed the actor; he was only doing what the director directed (or didn’t bother to). I hope he gets vindicated in future roles.