Episode 1: Star Wars Cluster – Ahmed Best

In the first cluster of episodes, we are turning out attention onto The Last Jedi, which we are coming at from multiple angles. The first episode, which you can access here, is an interview with Ahmed Best, the actor who played the part of Jar Jar Binks in the Star Wars prequels, perhaps one of the most hated characters in the franchise. But Best could not be a nicer or more thoughtful guy, and he’s spent much of the past decade plus digging deeper into issues of inclusion and representation, so we focused our interview mostly around the racial politics of Star Wars, and in the process, learned more about representational politics in contemporary Hollywood. Check it out below.