Ahmed Best

“The love is really overwhelming and very moving. So I'm just so gracious, and the love I get from 'The Mandalorian' is just as much.”

“When George Lucas said, 'I want you to be the template for this new character,' that was a huge responsibility.”

“Jar Jar is bigger than me, Jar Jar is bigger than all of us.”

“Kelleran Beq is the culmination of my life's work.”

“I was an artist, and I was giving a gift. And if you don't like it, you don't like it. That's fine.”

“20 years next year I faced a media backlash that still affects my career today.”

“I would say to him, 'As a black man, we don't have a lot of chances to be in these movies at this level.' It was my chance to be a hero.”

“I'm the first person to do this kind of work, but I was also the first person to get bullied for it.”

“It's really difficult to articulate the feeling... you feel like a success and a failure at the same time.”

“It's taken me 20 years to really start to feel good about the work that I did.”

“I'm a Black man from the Bronx who is now a Jedi. It's a very, very big deal.”

“Surviving is a Jedi trait, and some of the things that I've survived in my life are some of the things that Kelleran Beq has survived.”

“I want this to be a lesson in how to treat people.”

“I had to start my life all over again. It was a very, very dark time.”

“Art is a conversation. It’s not a monologue.”