In a new interview with Jamie Stangroom, published on Youtube on November 7th, 2017, Ahmed Best discusses a wide variety of topics including, but not limited to: his podcast 'The Afrofuturist', the importance of Jar Jar in motion picture history, his many projects (directing a play, a new album), and whether he'd be willing to return to Star Wars in another movie. 

He's also asked what he thinks about Jar Jar's post Return of the Jedi fate (so far) as revealed in Chuck Wendig's novel Aftermath: Empire's End from earlier this year. His reaction seems to be favorable, and he also reveals that he had asked George Lucas to kill him off in Revenge of the Sith:

"It's a very somber, very dark, eventuality for Jar Jar. Yeah I quite liked it actually. Um, It was, it was really dramatic and I think, uh,  I think a good idea to kind of sum up - I always, I always complained to George, like, when I realized that, you know, Sith was not going to have Jar Jar in it pretty much and they were moving very very far away from me, I always complained to George that I didn't get a good death. I wanted to like really be just hacked to pieces in some kind of way, you know, and George wouldn't do it."

(I find it interesting that Best wanted to have a death scene in ROTS. I've always believe that, had the character been more popular, that Jar Jar probably would have died in the final movie of the trilogy. That he would either be killed in a tragic way, giving Anakin one more reason to fall to the dark side, OR even darker, perhaps Anakin would have killed Jar Jar in anger as just another step on his path to being Darth Vader. It would be pretty shocking for Anakin to kill his childhood best friend! If this was ever the plan, it obviously didn't happen, possibly due to the negative reaction to Jar Jar after the Phantom Menace was released.)

Also of note in the interview, when asked what, if anything, he would change if he could go back in time and redo The Phantom Menace, Ahmed indicated that he had no regrets:

"Nothing. I wouldn't change anything. Um. There's nothing to change it to. There really hasn't been anything like it. And the choices that were made were choices that I think stand, you know, the test of time. Like I said, love it or hate it, you believed it and it existed so I really wouldn't change anything."

But the most interesting part of the interview, at least for me, is that Best mentioned that he's working on a book about his experiences with being Jar Jar and his involvement with Star Wars:

"I'm actually writing a book about my experience right now, and um, 'cause people keep pestering me to write a book and I've been saying no for 20 years, about writing a book about it. But, I have started, among all the other things that I do, I have started writing a book about, you know, what I went through and all of this,  and I'm hoping that that could answer a lot of the questions that people are itching to ask me about my experience with it."

No release date or title was given for this book, so it's unclear if/when we'll be able to read it, but I'll definitely be keeping a look out for it!

Be sure to check out the full interview below for all of this, and more.