Ahmed Best: The Poetry Behind It

What happens when rhythm, science, and vulnerability collide inside one artist? We sit down with Ahmed Best to explore a creative life that refuses boxes: a South Bronx kid raised by drums and physics, a performer who treats movement as first language, and an educator who teaches students to design for feeling rather than stumble into it.

Ahmed opens up about being an “emotional athlete,” choosing vulnerability on cue, and why social media’s loudness can’t replace true listening. He walks us through his Dramatic Narrative Design framework at USC—start with the emotion you want the audience to feel, then build story choices to deliver that outcome with intention.  

We also talk frankly about Jar Jar Binks and the cost of pioneering performance capture. Ahmed helped shape tools and techniques still used across film and games, yet the backlash nearly ended the work he loved. His reflections aren’t bitter; they’re practical, generous, and deeply human. He explains how to endure critique without losing truth, why mastery is a series of new beginnings, and how returning to Star Wars came from love rather than nostalgia.

If this resonated, follow the show, share it with a friend, and leave a quick review so more curious listeners can find us.

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Transcript

Opening And Acting As Truth

Ahmed Best 0:00

You know, most people think that as an actor, you're lying for a living. It's the exact opposite. You are being as truthful as you can possibly be. Yeah. And when that is criticized, you feel it. You know? That's why most actors don't read reviews. Because it hurts.

Ahmed’s Early Life And Schools

Jennifer Coronado 0:22

Hi, welcome to everyone is. I'm your host, Jennifer Coronado. The intent of this show is to engage with all kinds of people and build the understanding that anyone who has any kind of success is successful because they're a creative thinker. So whether you're an artist or a cook or an award-winning journalist, everyone has something to contribute to the human conversation. Because everyone just is. A lot of how we get guests on the show is related to the friends and family or colleagues saying, Hey man, I know someone you should really talk to, Jen. Our guest today is no exception. My friend Lynn Hale has worked closely with this guest during his journey on the Star Wars prequels and talked with the highest regard about him, not just as a performer, but as a human being. There was a wonderful New York Times piece that was written about him, and I can go on and on and on, but instead I'm going to talk to him and say it's our pleasure to welcome Ahmed Best to everyone is.

Ahmed Best 1:15

Hello. Thanks for having me.

Jennifer Coronado 1:18

Thank you for coming. You're best known in public as George R. Binks, but I don't want to start there. I want to start with little Ahmed. So where were you born and where did you grow up?

Ahmed Best 1:30

Yes, I was born in New York City, New York. I grew up in the South Bronx in New York City, uh up until around like junior high school. And then I moved to Maplewood, New Jersey for a very extreme culture shock for junior high school and high school. Went to Columbia High School, which is now famous, apparently. Like a lot of people who have come out of Columbia are now people that people talk to. Artist uh Bisa Butler came out of Columbia High School. Fizza came out of Columbia High School. Wow. Zach Braff came out of Columbia High School. Lauren Hill came out of Columbia High School. Wow. Zach and Lauren were there when I was there. They're a couple years younger than me. And Bisa was there. Bisa and I were in the same year. So a lot of people, Roy Schneider, Max Weinberg. A lot of people who came out of Columbia High School who are in the Columbia High School Hall of Fame.

Jennifer Coronado 2:29

You know what's really funny about that? I frequently joke to uh Aaron, our producer, about things like, you know, there's a year when everyone in Hollywood is making volcano films. Right. And there's just something in the air that suddenly makes it like everybody's thinking about making a volcano film. And it sort of feels like that culturally, too, when all of a sudden a group of people come out of somewhere, that there's something that attracts that energy there. So it's I find that really interesting.

Ahmed Best 2:58

Yeah, there was definitely an energy at Columbia, and it was extremely creative there, you know, which I I really, really enjoyed. All of us kind of in that in that creative world kind of knew each other, and we all survived there for some reason. You know, it was just, it was really magical.

Jennifer Coronado 3:18

What did that creativity look like? Like uh when you say it was cre it had a creative energy there, what did that mean?

Ahmed Best 3:24

We were really encouraged to find our voices. And there were a lot of opportunities to do that. You know, it was a it was a very big school, so each place of interest had its own wing. I think there was the music wing, and there was the acting ring, and there was the visual arts wing. So we were all science and mathematics and all this stuff. So we were always like in different parts of the school expressing ourselves. And I have to say we had some really, really good teachers who were extremely expansive with the way they they taught that really made us think and made us really be interested in being really good at what we were doing. So it really it was it was really about, you know, the space to do it and the encouragement from the teachers.

Jennifer Coronado 4:16

Did you have a favorite teacher? A favorite subject?

Ahmed Best 4:20

I had a couple. You know, I had some really, really good music teachers. My drama teacher, who was also my English teacher, was incredible. And then my physics teacher, I was really good at physics, and I really loved physics. Like science was one of the avenues that I wanted to go into. Before the performing arts called me. I was a nerdy kid, and you know, it was between like music, theater, and science. And those were my three like big lobs when I was coming up.

Jennifer Coronado 4:56

Well, you know what? It's funny because music is structured, you know, physics, but it's but it it's you know, obviously creative, and you can explore particularly on the jazz side of it, right?

Ahmed Best 5:09

Um yeah, and they all kind of correlate, right? There's a lot of mathematics in music, you know, especially when you're talking about like music theory and the way you divide and subdivide notes, bars, time signatures, key signatures, and so forth. So there's a lot of mathematics that goes into it. And it really is about like this discovery of nature, which is which I loved physics for. It was because you got to really look at nature and feel nature and figure out how it worked. Right. And all of these magnificent discoveries would happen in the physics class, and it was the same when I was playing music. It was all of this beautiful discovery that you can find inside a song that people have played a million times, but you you play it differently. Right. So it really is about like finding, discovering who you are through the music and instincting in physics who are you in nature?

Jennifer Coronado 6:09

Yeah.

Ahmed Best 6:10

You know? And then with acting, like with theater, it it it was it was kind it was very much, you know, reading a piece of music for me. Like 15, I was my superpower was understanding Shakespeare. And when people like in my English class hated it, I loved it. For some reason, I got it, you know. It just all made sense to me.

Shakespeare, Rhythm, And Theater

Jennifer Coronado 6:35

Also, the thing about Shakespeare, like honestly, like music, you know, it's got the iambic pentameter. The way he writes, people find it complicated, but it's actually kind of how people speak.

Ahmed Best 6:46

Yeah, I mean, that poetry, that iambic pentameter, it's like rap music. You know what I'm saying? It's it's it's a it's a cadence that we're all used to in in our, you know, popular entertainment worlds, you know, especially when it comes to poetry. So rhythmically, and I'm a drummer, so rhythmically, it just like really made sense to me. And uh, for some reason, I I just could see it every time I read Shakespeare. And so I really fell in love with it, and I just fell in love with saying the words and the poetry behind it. You know, and that's that's what really got me into the theater and got me into drama.

Jennifer Coronado 7:27

And I know you went to like you mentioned, you went you went to school for music ultimately. But were you doing theater at the same time still, or what was happening there?

Ahmed Best 7:36

Yeah, I was always doing both. You know, at that time people made you choose. And, you know, music called me first, but I was always on stage. You know, even when I was at Manhattan School of Music, I was always doing a play somewhere, and I was always on stage doing something. You know, it was always something that was in my life. So it never stopped. You know, I was always doing a million things at once, like I kind of am doing now. You know, I was in the band and I was in a jazz band, and I was like, you know, I was in the Parnassion Society and, you know, president of this association, that, and that kind of just continued until I got to Stomp, which was like all of it in one place.

Balancing Music And Stage Work

Jennifer Coronado 8:19

Yeah, I wanted to ask you about that because there's so I actually I took my little brother, he was like 13. Because I have a brother who's 14 years younger than me, and he always, every time I mention him on a podcast, he's always see you mentioned me as your favorite brother again. That's not the case. But um I took him when he was 13 because I always want people to see performance and see the energy of life performance. And I do that with my nieces and nephews too. And it it was so engaging for him, and you were actually in that performance, which he saw. Oh wow, get out of here. That's great. So I think that's great. I mean, and I know for you, for your family, like your sister's a musician. Some of your grandparents were musicians, your brother.

Family Of Makers And Polymaths

Ahmed Best 8:59

Yeah, I come from a long line of broke artists. Um, yeah. My uncles, my grandparents, like everybody has a performance, some kind of a performance of artistic inclination. Like my uncles were painters, my brother's a painter. My mother can do everything. She's a polymath, you know, she's one, she's and a deconstructor, so she can like look at something and do it, either make it or play it or paint it, you know. My father is a cinematographer and a photographer, so you know, he comes from the film world and did TV for years, right? He was a cameraman on America and wanted more of the sports, fantasy sports. So it was always around, you know. The arts were all all throughout my childhood. My uncle was a guitar player and his wife was a singer. So, and he had nine kids, and they all had musical abilities. So anytime one of the kids got married, the cousins would be the wedding band. So no one ever had to hire a wedding band. So that was kind of the environment I grew up in.

Jennifer Coronado 10:04

Yeah. Well, I mean, you say your mom is a polymath, but uh aren't you a little bit of a polymath yourself?

Ahmed Best 10:10

I mean, you know, yeah, that's where I get it from. I get it from my mother, you know, the whole polymath thing. I'm a deconstructor as well. I try to look at something and break it down and see how I can do it, you know. And then I try to figure out what it feels like in my mind, in my body. You know, I've I've never come up against something that I felt like I couldn't do. I feel like everything is just once you learn how you learn, then you can pretty much learn anything.

Jennifer Coronado 10:39

How do you think you learn? What's what you said feel you mentioned your body feeling. What and you talk about feelings quite a bit and how that works with your process. Yeah. Talk about it.

How He Learns And Teaches Feel

Ahmed Best 10:50

Feel is a big thing for me. You know, I'm I'm in my class, I teach at USC uh in the fall, and I'm in my classroom right now, and you know, I'm I'm really about like how you feel and how you want the people that you are talking to, reacting to, you know, or listening to how you want them to feel. And I'm constantly talking about how to do that. Right. So the course I teach at SC is called Dramatic Narrative Design, and it's a course that I created. And it really talks about how you design the drama and how you make sure that when you are designing the drama, you are designing the thing that you want the audience to feel. It really is about trusting those, building those skills to feel and trusting those feelings. And that came from a lot of trial and error, you know, because I had great teachers, but I also had not so great teachers. And when you do have not so great teachers, but you have this desire to want to learn something, you want to know something, you try to teach yourself. Right. And so there are a lot of things that I did that I was self-taught. And a lot of it was because people would say to me, You're this thing, you're not this thing. So learn this thing and don't learn that thing. Right. Right. So, you know, I was constantly moved away from certain things, you know, especially coming up through high school. You know, I was moved away from math and science because I had more of an extreme talent for the performing arts.

Jennifer Coronado 12:31

Right.

Emotional Engine And Futurism

Ahmed Best 12:31

And so the the general idea is if you want to get a job, you move more towards where you are talented. And then you you you know, cultivate those talents in order to create something in which you can be employed. Yes. But that's not that interesting to me. I actually want to learn about things that I don't have a talent for. You know what I'm saying? I love mathematics, but I never had that prodigious proclivity or talent for it. That doesn't mean I can't learn it, and that doesn't mean I can't love it, you know. So I learned how I learn, which was a challenge. But now that I can do that, I can pretty much learn anything. And, you know, I'm I'm a tactile learner, I'm a I'm a visual learner, I'm a story learner. And as a professional storyteller and, you know, as an emotional athlete, I like to call myself, you know, if I can get something in my body, I can do it. You know, if I can feel how it is, I can do it.

Jennifer Coronado 13:47

And you talk about your emotional engine quite a bit too. So that's that's what that connects to, like the thing that feeds you, right?

Ahmed Best 13:54

Yeah. So emotional engine, when I talk about it in my classroom, I define it as the driving emotional force that moves you forward towards change. Right. We are trapped in the present, but we have the ability to perceive the future and recognize the past, right? And at Stanford, I teach a class called Inventing the Future. And I also have a company that is a futurist company.

Jennifer Coronado 14:24

Right.

Ahmed Best 14:25

That is, that is, you know, really foundationally afro-futurist. And one of the things that I think moves us forward as human beings, you know, with a preferable cortex is our experiences emotionally, right? But we all have that emotional engine that is the main reason why we move forward and why we change in our lives. And when we find that emotional engine, then it is very easy to articulate what that thing is and share what that thing is and grow it. You know, the hardest part, I think, about the emotional engine is admitting to yourself that you have one. And that is the thing that is motivating you.

Vulnerability, Social Media, And Design

Jennifer Coronado 15:12

Why do you think that's hard? Why do you think that's hard for people or for yourself, even? For me, it's not that hard, right?

Ahmed Best 15:18

Because as a as a performing artist, that's what I crave, right? In order you for you to really know who you are emotionally, you have to be extremely vulnerable. And that is scary. And it's scary for most people. Most people, most of us, we train ourselves out of vulnerability. Right. We put ourselves in these places where we can just protect ourselves because it's very hard to go through this world, especially in America where the competition is just how everything is really driven. It's very hard to go through that and be open and honest because you can be taken advantage of. And, you know, rightfully so. It's scary. But actors, musicians, like those of us who spend our lives in front of people, we are, you know, crazy enough to want that in our everyday. We want that vulnerability. And we try to cultivate it, we try to crave it, right? That's that's kind of our bread and butter, the ability to be vulnerable when we need to be vulnerable, right? That's why I call us emotional athletes, right? If you ask us to be vulnerable in 15 minutes, we can be vulnerable in 15 minutes. That's the training. Yeah. But most people don't want to be vulnerable at all. So as we get older, as kids, we're completely vulnerable. We're open. The older we get, the more we mask it. Um, the more we create the facade. And then we start putting out as people what we want people to see when they see us. And then we live in that identity. I mean, that's why social media is what it is, because it is how you see, how you want people to see you. Right? It's not even how you see yourself.

Jennifer Coronado 17:17

Yeah, and it's so performative, and I I uh but not in a way that is authentic. Do you know?

Ahmed Best 17:24

Yeah, that's the goal. The goal is for it not to be authentic. You're putting out your greatest hits. So if you can be glamorous and sexy and always camera ready, and that's what you want people to see from you. Social media is the platform built for that.

Jennifer Coronado 17:48

Right. And you know it's so funny to me, social media is more isolating now than it is connecting, in my opinion. Because you're sort of like you're sort of like Cassandra shouting into the void, right? You think you're making a point, but the other person in order for people to hear your point, they have to be listening. But people aren't listening on social media.

Movement, Suzuki, And Martial Arts

Ahmed Best 18:08

No, they're not. It it really is about you and your ego being heard and heard really, really loud. And it works because I think as prey animals, as we were for a very, very long time, we gravitate towards protection uh in groups. So if you want protection as a human being, we learned, you know, back when we were evolving in the African savannah that we're probably safer together than we are individually.

Jennifer Coronado 18:47

Right.

Ahmed Best 18:48

And we keep feeding that, you know, fear part of our brain, right? And it's fed to us that we are going to be attacked, right? We are constantly under siege by, you know, the powers that be in order to, you know, get money. It's the it's the money game. You know, they collect the data, they sell the data, they make the money, right? And so the more eyes on platform, the more money we they can make. So they're playing on our psychology to make money. And our psychology is that that scarcity mentality, that prey mentality. And then we tribal, we all get together and we all shout into the void, and nothing ever gets solved. But that's the that's you know, design. Right. Which is why, which is why what I I teach what I teach, right? Because when you see the design, it's a lot harder to fall into it. Right. And in the movies, that's our job, right? Our job in the movies is to make you feel the way we want you to feel. It's not an arbitrary thing, right? And so, what are the skills and tools to do that? That's what's being done to us in our news cycle, that's what's being done to us in our social media. So once you see it and you can analyze it, it's a lot harder to be a victim of it.

Jennifer Coronado 20:14

Yeah. I and it's interesting because I want to get a little bit back to the performance side of you. And and maybe I don't know if you're teaching this, but there's something when you're connecting with an audience, right? There's a mutual energy that you're sharing with each other. Yes. And uh in some of the performance that I see you do, do you do you know to Tadashi Suzuki, the theory? Yes, of course.

Ahmed Best 20:45

Yeah, I studied Suzuki performance.

Patience, Mastery, And The Long Game

Jennifer Coronado 20:47

I I was gonna say, I see a lot of that in your physicality, like that grounding energy that you bring to performances and and how your body, you talked about how your body is so in to performance. So I wonder if you could talk about what your influences continue to be as you're teaching and learning more about yourself every day. Where where are the things that you draw from, you know?

Ahmed Best 21:11

Yeah, I mean, for me, when it comes to performance and from and and you know, how I move on stage, I've changed a lot as I've gotten older. When I was younger, I just wanted to move. I didn't care, you know what I'm saying? I just wanted to fly, you know, and a lot of times in Stomp, I was very rarely on the ground. I was always like jumping somewhere, flying somewhere. And you know, I loved that athleticism. I've always loved performers who, uh, especially actors who used their bodies, you know. A lot of actors are trained to use their voice.

Jennifer Coronado 21:55

Yeah.

Ahmed Best 21:56

You know, actors mostly come from voice uh influentially and not their bodies. Like when you study Shakespeare, you know, Shakespearean actors don't really move. Yeah, it's the shoulders, yeah, ear, and they'll move their head and they'll think like that, but they don't, you know, or they aren't really grounded. My mother uh is uh percussionist as well. And she plays an African instrument called the Shaker, which is from West Africa. And, you know, percussion and dance, when you're talking about African or African diasporic music going in the game. Yeah. Right. Very rarely does somebody play a drum and people sit down and watch it. It's really like a call to move or a call to communicate or a call to speak. So a lot of my impetus for movement comes from that, right? So finding the rhythm of what's going on on stage and being able to respond to the rhythm of things with my body. So I I move first, right? I don't speak first when it comes to the performing arts. The other thing is, you know, I've been a martial artist all my life. You must start it.

Jennifer Coronado 23:18

Is there anything you don't do, dude?

Ahmed Best 23:21

Is there anything? I that's a really good question. I don't know yet. I haven't found it yet.

Jennifer Coronado 23:27

I see, I love that. I love that you're like, I can do everything, and I but I just haven't found my my wall versus people who are like, I don't, I don't know if I can do it. No, no, and that's such a wonderful way to push through life.

Fatherhood And Guiding By Tailoring

Jar Jar, Innovation, And Fallout

Ahmed Best 23:39

You know, yeah, you know, I like the try. That's one one one line in Empire that I disagree with, with Yoda, you know, do or do not. No, there's no, I I dig the try. You gotta start somewhere, you know? Yeah. And if you don't try, you'll never do. Look, it might not be for you, you know, but try it once. You might you might discover something about yourself. I think everything that I I do is an exploration into who I am. So who am I as a martial artist? Who am I as a musician? Who am I as an actor? Who am I as a cook? You know? But it really is about me. I, you know, as much as I do a lot of things, I'm really only doing one thing, and that's me. And how do I express myself in these other things, right? Like Bruce Lee, who was a big influence of mine, because I'm a martial artist, you know, I grew up watching Bruce Lee movies and listening to Bruce Lee. And Bruce Lee created this martial art called Jake, and that was his expression of his experience as an artist. And he gave it a name, right? And as a kid, that's what I really loved. I loved the fact that you can create your own expression of yourself through these things, and that has always been my goal for myself, right? So, regardless of the style of martial art I do, my question to myself was how do what who am I in this art? Right? I'm not necessarily worried about what anyone thinks of me in the art. And I'm not trying to be who my instructors are, right? Some people are are like that. Some people look at their instructors and they copy everything that they do. Right. You know, like when I was studying Jee Kundeau with guru Danny Nassanto here in California, in LA, you know, I would go to his class. And then when I would go to other people's classes, they would be teaching like him, right? They would have the same hand on the hip, they would do the same gestures, they would talk in the same cadence, right? That was never for me. You know what I'm saying? I wasn't interested in being Dan Inn Santo. He's himself. And he's wonderful. And there was no way I was gonna out Dan Inno Santo, Dan Inno Santo, you know? My question is, what do I look like to Ingenie Krypto? How do I express myself in this art created by Bruce Lee? And I didn't really find that until like last year. You know what I'm saying? Oh, really? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, and that's the other thing about exploring yourself through these things, right? It takes as long as it takes. There's no time limit on it. So I'm not stressed out about it. I'm just like, yeah, when I find it, I'll find it, you know?

Jennifer Coronado 27:07

Where does that come from? Where's that patience come from? That patience for exploration? Because it feels to me like you've had a life of epiphanies, right? Where you've hit different metrics that maybe even surprised you at some point. But where does that where's that source come from? Does that come from your parents and how they educated you, or is it just something you naturally came to?

Ahmed Best 27:28

Yeah, I think it comes from me being impatient and having no other choice. Okay. Right? Because I've I've always been like, I need it now, I need it now, I need it now. And you go, what's everybody doing? Right. But as much as I've done that, time I don't control. You know what I'm saying? So it's just like, it's gonna come when it's gonna come, whether I like it or not, or whether I want it to be now or I don't. And it only when I realize it, only when I realize it do I realize, oh, okay, that's taking some time. But it's taken me a really long time to be okay with learning slow, right? Because in general, I'm a fast learner, right? But there's something to be said about learning slow and learning over time, and not trying to be, and I think this is the the biggest thing that's changed. I wanted to be, when I was younger, I wanted to be excellent fast. You know, like I wanted to learn something and perfect it and be an expert at it in the shortest amount of time, right? Like when I got my black belt in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, I did it in six years, and the average is 10. And I was like, I'm gonna do it in six, and I did. And then I got a black belt, and then I was just like, okay, now what? I did it.

Jennifer Coronado 29:05

Um, do you feel like you didn't enjoy the journey as much as you could have? Because you when you were younger, yeah.

Ahmed Best 29:12

I did, I enjoyed the journey, but what I had to realize was the journey doesn't end. You know what I mean? It's only a series of new beginnings. So when I think about getting there to the finishing line, you know, and achieving the thing. You know, before it was just like, okay, now I'll know. But now I'm just like more excited to not know. You know, when I get to the finish line, I'm just like, oh, okay, now there's this, these, there are these set of things that I don't know. What is there to discover in this?

Jennifer Coronado 29:56

That's interesting to say that because you you know we talked earlier about how you know when you're young. You tend to be more open, you know.

Ahmed Best 30:04

Vulnerable.

Jennifer Coronado 30:05

But it feels to me like do you think that you've gotten more open and vulnerable as you got you've gotten older? Or no?

Ahmed Best 30:12

Oh yeah.

Jennifer Coronado 30:12

Yeah.

Ahmed Best 30:13

Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. And helping, giving it a name and and also teaching helps that a lot. You know, because you go it ebbs and flows, you go through these periods, you know. Like in my 20s, I thought I knew everything. And I was indestructible.

Jennifer Coronado 30:30

Well, you were also producing albums in your 20s, which is something that most 20-year-olds are not doing.

Ahmed Best 30:35

Yeah. Yeah, I was producing records and Star Wars happened in my 20s. Right. But then, you know, you get to your 30s, your 40s, and your 50s. And, you know, you have to move forward. You know, we are trapped in this timeline. You can't stay still and you can't go backwards. And so moving forward, you have to have something that moves you forward and you know, forces you to change. And that's that emotional engine piece.

Jennifer Coronado 31:10

Yeah.

Ahmed Best 31:10

Once I figured that out for myself, I was like, okay, now I know how to move forward. Because I know what this thing that's driving me.

Teaching, Advocacy, And Self-Agency

Jennifer Coronado 31:18

Yeah. Your father. Right. And do you feel like this is this is stuff that you are imparting to your kids at this point? Or are you letting are you or are you a parent who wants to let them explore and then maybe give them advice on the side? I mean, all kids are different, so it's Yeah.

Getty PST: Where Art Meets Science

Ahmed Best 31:37

I'm a little of both. You know, I I've always wanted to be a father. It's it's something that if if anything is the thing that makes me the happiest, and something that I'm the most proud of, is being a father. I always tell my son, you've made me the man of my dreams, you know. So he is everything to me. And I just want to make sure that he's good. So whenever he needs words, I give them to him. But a lot of times I let him discover, right? I don't see myself as a parent who has to helicopter or or control, right? I'm I'm not a controlling parent. I see myself as more like a tailor, you know, where if the pants are a little bit too long, I just gonna hem up, give them a little hem, right? If, you know, if the jacket needs to come in a little bit, I can just take it in a little bit. You know what I'm saying? So for me, his lessons aren't that you should or you shouldn't. Right. For me, his is just like, you might want to think about, you know, taking it in a little bit. Yeah. You know, and then ultimately I let him make his decisions. Uh I'm not, I'm not, I'm there to make sure that he at every point in his life can get back up until he doesn't need me and he can get back up on his own.

Jennifer Coronado 33:17

Right. I want to uh, you know, I started off by saying I didn't want to talk about Jar Jar, yeah. And then I want to talk about Jar Jar. And I want to talk about it because you had a pretty vulnerable moment in the Light in Magic documentary that you read, where you talked about just the deep psychological toll that it it took on you at that time. And I wonder, you know, and you talk about whatever you're comfortable talking about, but I wonder what that made you feel about people at that time. How that may have evolved for you and how you how you feel about that that experience now, you know, 20 20.

Scientists, Storytelling, And Trust

Ahmed Best 34:02

Yeah. You know, I've always been proud of that experience. Even at its most challenging times. The hardest part about it all for me was the fact that there was some really great work being done. You know, and I felt like I kind of found I I've I found it, you know. Like when I was coming up as a young actor, I always wanted to be uh a character actor. You know, I always wanted to be that actor who could disappear into roles. And, you know, I wanted to be the guy who was like, everybody would be like, man, I don't know that guy's name, but he's great in everything. Who is that guy? You know what I'm saying? I've always wanted to be that actor. And Jar Jar was that, like to the tenth degree. It was like, I totally could disappear and lose myself in this thing. And this character lives and exists and breathes. And I just loved it. I loved every minute of the work. I loved the challenge of coming up with a walk and a voice and an interaction. I loved the technology of it. Like it filled my entire like science jones that I still have to this day, right? I loved working with Rob Coleman and John Noel at ILM and having them and George go, we don't know if this can be done. Can you do this? And I'll go, yeah, let's try it. And we would try some stuff and it would work. Yep. So there's your trial. Yeah, I mean, it was absolutely phenomenal. And what broke my heart was the fact that I felt like it was done. It was over. I could never do that work again. And at 26, you know, which is when I went through this severe depression, at 26, and thinking that your life is over, it was a lot to handle. You know, and I was just like, I'll never find anything like this again. Like I'll never find, like I found my thing. I found the thing that I can be me in completely, totally. And no one has ever done this before. Like, I'm not only am I as a performer fulfilling everything, but as a pioneer in film, I found this thing.

Jennifer Coronado 36:46

Right, which keeps all of the things you've talked about really wanting, right?

Ahmed Best 36:50

Absolutely. And, you know, George Lucas trusts me to make decisions in, you know, his movie. And, you know, Star Wars was the first movie I ever saw as a kid. So it was like not only a dream come true, but it was like the respect that I got from all of my peers in the movie and the trust that George had in me. And you know, coming together with ILM and making this thing, it was just amazing. And it it all of the hopes of where it could go came crashing down.

Jennifer Coronado 37:27

Yeah.

Ahmed Best 37:27

And that's what was so terrible to me. Like the fame and the money and that kind of stuff, you can have it. That's not for me. You know what I'm saying? Like, I that's not why I did it. Right. You know, that wasn't important to me. It's still not. What's important to me was like, we could like really create something special here. We can do some pioneering work.

Jennifer Coronado 37:51

Yeah.

Ahmed Best 37:52

You know, and I wanted to evolve with the technology. I wanted to craft this new way of acting that now all of a sudden exists called performance capture. I wanted to be at the forefront of all of that.

Jennifer Coronado 38:07

Right.

Ahmed Best 38:08

And I couldn't.

Jennifer Coronado 38:10

Yeah.

Ahmed Best 38:10

And I couldn't, not because of me. You know what I'm saying? Like it was completely out of my control.

Jennifer Coronado 38:17

Right.

Ahmed Best 38:18

So that's what was really heartbreaking about the situation.

Jennifer Coronado 38:23

When I think about the age you were at that time, too. You know, we talked about the frontal cortex. Yours had just developed.

Ahmed Best 38:29

Yeah.

Jennifer Coronado 38:30

And suddenly it was being assaulted. You know what I mean?

Communication Gaps And Bridging Worlds

Ahmed Best 38:33

Yeah. By the world. By the world. All over the world. And you know, I always say I was a skinny kid from the South Bronx. You know what I'm saying? Thrust into this place where all of a sudden I had to be like media savvy and, you know, publicity savvy and know how to handle myself with, you know, journalists who were coming for my throat and George's throat through me.

Jennifer Coronado 39:02

Yeah.

Ahmed Best 39:03

You know? And I didn't have any protection. You know what I'm saying? I didn't have a public relations person just working with me. Right. You know? And and then I kicked into what everybody else did. Like I tried to protect George. And I would again, you know what I'm saying? Because I believe in the work.

Jennifer Coronado 39:23

Yeah. Well, and that's the thing about being a performer. And you may have understood that I was a performer in the past. Otherwise, I wouldn't bring up Tadashi Suzuki. You you become vulnerable. You put yourself out there. And so what's great about that is the emotional highs from connecting with people and an audience and all of that is fantastic. But when something doesn't work, it can be soul crushing because you've put your whole self into it. Right.

Ahmed Best 39:54

Yeah. I don't think people really understand that, you know, when you're a civilian. You know, they don't really understand how much of ourselves we put in this work. I think every role that we play is a piece of us.

Jennifer Coronado 40:09

Right.

Ahmed Best 40:10

And, you know, we we find ourselves in the character. You know, most people think that as an actor, you're lying for a living. It's the exact opposite. You are you are being as truthful as you can possibly be. Yeah. And when that when when that is criticized, you feel it. You know, that's why most actors don't read reviews. Because it hurts, you know, like people don't really realize like we're human beings at the end of the day. That shit hurts. So for some reason, people don't believe that it hurts when it does.

Jennifer Coronado 40:50

Yeah. And the interesting thing too is like you talked about there's a piece of the character that stays with you always because you've played it, right? I think. And particularly when you originate a character, right? Yeah. But then you was all there's also a piece of you you leave with the character, right? Yeah. So it's an experience.

Dream Paths: Quantum Physics Or Space

Ahmed Best 41:07

And with with me, it wasn't just an experience, right? I was helping create software. Right. That is like being used to this day when you're talking about performance capture, right? So not only is my performance as an actor there, but my performance was digitized and copied and distributed, and now is the DNA of every performance capture everywhere in the world today.

Jennifer Coronado 41:44

Yep.

Ahmed Best 41:44

You know, and I don't get anything from that. Not even the recognition. Which is the the hardest part of it. Right. That's the hardest part because I I want to be able to make an impact. I want to be able to innovate the work. You know, and I want to be able to continue the work. You know, I it's it's something that I love that I wanted to keep doing. And and those opportunities just went away. So that was hard.

Jennifer Coronado 42:21

Yeah. Well, you have come back to doing some Star Wars stuff. You know, you were in Mando, and you've done some the Lego Star Wars, right?

Ahmed Best 42:30

Did Lego. I did Clone Wars.

Jennifer Coronado 42:32

Yeah.

Ahmed Best 42:33

I mean, I love Star Wars. And one of the reasons why it hurt so much is because I love it so much.

Jennifer Coronado 42:39

Yeah.

Ahmed Best 42:40

And it raised me. You know, I was raised by Star Wars and Marvel Comics.

Jennifer Coronado 42:45

Yeah.

Earthling Culture And Closing Credits

Ahmed Best 42:46

That was my life. So being in it was a dream come true. And then, you know, being ostracized from it was heartbreaking because it it has so much with my heart. Like I've I loved it before I was even in it. So I will never really say no to Star Wars. You know, it's it's always something that is going to be a part of me. And it's something that I've always wanted to be a part of, as heartbreaking as you know that time was. It's not like I don't want to do it. Of course I want to do it. I mean, right. I'm a little bit more aware of what could happen. But that just makes me stronger when it comes to doing things.

Jennifer Coronado 43:34

Yeah, I get that. I the first film I remember seeing, other than Annie, uh, was Star Wars. And my dad took me, I was three years old. My dad took me because my mom didn't want to go. And I remember sitting in that theater and then the ship coming up. Yeah. You know, and I I was like, whoa. And to this day, my husband says, that's my home is sitting in a theater seat and watching in the dark, watching something come to life. It's a it's a it's a life-changing experience, really.

Ahmed Best 44:09

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, yes. I feel the exact same way. That was my experience as a kid watching it. It's just as soon as that destroyer comes in. That was like I was poked.

Jennifer Coronado 44:19

Yeah.

Ahmed Best 44:20

From the scary. Yeah. And it's that that feeling has never left me.

Jennifer Coronado 44:28

Yeah. You're a very generous educator. You you see you seem to me like you're lifting kids up, you know, helping them find find them, find themselves in their space. One of the things I always tell people is feel free to advocate for yourself. Nobody goes to sleep at night thinking about you but you. And those are life lessons that I think we need uh to think about. I want to talk about what you're doing with some of the museum stuff you were doing in Los Angeles as well. And can you talk a little about that and your connection to tech and art and science and how they collide?

Ahmed Best 45:04

Yeah. So the Getty does this thing every five years called PST, which used to be called Pacific Standard Time, but now it's just called PST. And this go-around, it was about art and science. And those, that's my those are my two things. Like I love art and I love science. And so I was working with the National Academy of Sciences, Art and Entertainment Exchange for a while. So I was hosting some events and I was creating, I was crafting some events, working with the NAS. And so doing that, I got on the Getty's radar and they asked if I wanted to be the spokesperson for uh PST Art and Science Collide. And I couldn't say no. It was just one of those things that really resonated with me. And, you know, Jar Jar was art and science colliding. And I I felt like I embodied that in my work and in my performance. So it it just was a uh it was just it just fit me just really well. And so I ran around the world with the Getty Museum, trying to get people to Los Angeles to see all of these exhibits that were around LA that had to do with an artist and a scientist coming together and making something completely original. And it was extremely special. I met a lot of wonderful artists and a lot of great scientists and got to listen a lot. And I realized how much science needs art, and vice versa. Yeah. The artists were always more open to the collaboration than the scientists were, and I think that's because of the culture of science, you know? Scientists aren't used to being in the spotlight. And they're used to be they they they want to be taken seriously. Right. And a lot of them kind of didn't trust the fact that if they worked with an artist, that they'd be taken seriously. A lot of it just had to do with like insecurity. And then when you meet them and you start talking to them, you realize that art artists and scientists are way, much more aligned than even they think they are. So it was just wonderful seeing the collaborations happen.

Jennifer Coronado 47:16

Yeah, it goes back to that idea of creative thinking, right?

Ahmed Best 47:19

Yeah.

Jennifer Coronado 47:20

You just have your different ways of thinking creatively. It doesn't mean that you're not creative thinkers. You're just a scientist trying to discover a cure for something or or a particle. And how what how much how much more drama is there than that, right? Trying to just some discovery, right?

Ahmed Best 47:37

Yeah. I mean, I was talking to the to one of the scientists who discovered gravitational waves, right, in the universe. And there was this machine that they built down in Louisiana that, you know, it was like one of four that could detect gravitational waves. And when he got the email that they detected the waves, he was like, I didn't believe it. I thought it was a hoax. I thought somebody was like pranking me. Wow. And that's when I was just like, oh my God, you're a human being. You know what I'm saying? Like, he was, he, he, he didn't believe it. Like, lead scientist helped build the thing, had the theory, and then the thing happened, and he was like, nope, nope, can't believe it. This this is this is the hoax. And it wasn't until the second event that he was just like, okay, maybe this thing could be true. And the thing that's so dramatic about it is like, what is that thing that made me think it was the hoax? Like, you came up with the science. You helped build the machine. You're at the forefront of the research. It's like you don't believe yourself. Like you don't believe you can be smart enough and and and prepared enough to actually see the proof of the event that you knew was coming.

Jennifer Coronado 48:55

It's interesting.

Ahmed Best 48:56

It was fascinating.

Jennifer Coronado 48:57

Yeah, I think I think it comes too from theory, theory, theory, theory is what you're talking about when you're working on a scientific discovery. And then the actuality happens and you're like, wait a minute, I'm over here in theory.

Ahmed Best 49:08

And I was right. See, I think people have this idea that scientists sit in labs all day and come up with theories and then tell everybody else that they're stupid and smoke a cigarette and drink a glass of whiskey. Yeah. Like that's not what's happening. Right. Scientists are some of the most like insecure people who enjoy being proven wrong so much that when they're right, it's surprising. Right? They are wrong most of the time.

Jennifer Coronado 49:47

Yeah.

Ahmed Best 49:48

And it's not like religion, right? They're not looking for validation for their beliefs. They're looking for the opposite of that. So when they have validation for their beliefs, it's unbelievable. They're like, we're, no, that's not right. I must have made a mistake. And in the climate of right now, where everyone has become so anti-science in, you know, in the popular discourse, right? I don't think they know enough scientists because they think that the scientists are just sitting on high, going, you all are dumb, listen to us, do what we say. And it's the opposite of that. Right. They are people with families. Yeah. And they want their families to be just as safe as everybody else. And that's where they're working from.

Jennifer Coronado 50:36

Yeah, totally. And and when you think about it, performing, you know, when you're performing, you're constantly being told louder, taller, softer, do this, do that, do this. It's kind of the same with science, right? Scientists peer review, actual, we found this. This is wrong. You should re rerun this. It's the same kind of human experience, you know. Yes. And right. People don't recognize that because scientists are more self-contained, right?

Ahmed Best 51:06

Yeah. I mean, most of them sit at a bench and, you know, look at the smallest parts of our universe and write it down. That's all they're doing. They're not, you know, wringing their hands going, how can I take over the world? Like they're not that creepy. Yeah, they're not like, wow, wait till I put this microchip in these vaccines. That's not what they do. No. You know, that's not what they do at all. But the narrative out there has, I think, painted scientists in an unrealistic light. And, you know, some of it is their fault. Some of it is they don't say enough. It's a communication thing. Yeah. And one of the biggest reasons why I did PST, Part of Science Collide, is because I think science has a communication problem. And who better to handle that communication problem than the performing artists?

Jennifer Coronado 51:59

Yeah.

Ahmed Best 51:59

You know? Alan Alda has an entire foundation where he teaches scientists how to talk to people. And he does like impromptu comedy with them and gets them out of their shell so they can be better communicators. So we know how wonderful the scientists are.

Jennifer Coronado 52:15

Yeah, you just made me love him even more.

Ahmed Best 52:17

Yeah, he's awesome.

Jennifer Coronado 52:19

Yeah.

Ahmed Best 52:19

You know? And I love that as well, right? Because science was like the other avenue that I wanted to take, that I did take. I've always kind of wanted to stay science adjacent. And so working with the NAS and the science and entertainment exchange has kept me in that world so much that now I have so many scientists that I can call like really great friends. And I can help them talk to people. Yeah. Um, because that's what we all need. We all need to know a scientist.

Jennifer Coronado 52:56

Yeah, totally. I have we're running up on time, so I want to ask you a final question. And I'm gonna James Luton it here. You know, he always had that list of questions that he had, right? Your favorite cursed word and so exactly your favorite cursed word. And I this one I thought about this morning. I was like, I really want to ask him this question because I don't think because we've talked about it, and now I know you don't fit into a box.

Ahmed Best 53:19

Yeah, no, I'm I've never I've never been a in a put in a box kind of person.

Jennifer Coronado 53:24

Yeah. So I I want to ask you this question. What profession other than your own would you like to attempt?

Ahmed Best 53:34

Attempt.

Jennifer Coronado 53:35

Attempt.

Ahmed Best 53:36

I would love, you know, I have a I have a really great friend, Spiral Mikolakis at Caltech, who is a quantum physicist. Uh he's a theoretical physicist and a quantal physicist and a quantum physicist. And every time I talk to him, it's like building and discovering new worlds and realms. It's amazing. I mean, I just love being in that mind space, that headspace. And you know, a lot of my heroes in the science world were in that, in the physics realm of a biology. I'm getting really big into biology. So I would, I would love to be in that quantum physics space, in that quantum physics world. Or I would either do that, or I, you know, I would love to be an astronaut. You know, NASA just announced all it is to do astronauts uh a couple of days ago, and there's nobody black. And there used to be a whole bunch of black astronauts that we could talk about, right? Like one of my heroes is Ron McNair. He he died on the Challenger, and this guy was like physicist, astrophysicist, scientist, beat the odds, became you know, an astronaut. And I would love to do that. I would love to explore space.

Jennifer Coronado 55:14

Well, here's to hoping that's your next thing.

Ahmed Best 55:18

We'll see. I would definitely do it through NASA and and not through the private companies because I think there's a little bit more of uh an experience you can have through NASA.

Jennifer Coronado 55:30

Yeah, I agree because it's pure science and it's not the money boys. Yeah.

Ahmed Best 55:34

Yeah, yeah, and you're doing it for the sake of doing it.

Jennifer Coronado 55:36

Yeah.

Ahmed Best 55:37

You know, you're doing it to help out humanity. And I think you know, I think a lot of times we are very anthro-procentric. I think human beings need to be a little bit more humble when it comes to this earth. So there's this thing that I call earthling culture, which, you know, I helped develop with a couple friends of mine who with whom I teach at Stanford, right? So one of my great friends, his name is Drew Endy, and he's a synthetic biologist. And he would always ask this question in our class, he would say, What does the banana slug want? And I love that kind of thinking because you are thinking of the earth from the point of view of the banana slug and not from the human. And when we when we stop thinking anthropocentric and start thinking about all the other things on this earth, we start thinking differently. And we take uh these other perspectives, become our reality. So earthling culture to me is a really big deal because we can think what does the banana slug want. And I think we all need to think more like banana slugs these days.

Jennifer Coronado 56:59

I think you're right. Well, thank you for joining us today. We really appreciate it.

Ahmed Best 57:05

My pleasure. It's been awesome.

Jennifer Coronado 57:08

Thank you for listening to Everyone Is. Everyone Is is produced and edited by Chris Hawkinson. Executive producer is Aaron Dusseau. Music by Doug Infinite. Our logo and graphic design is by Harrison Parker, and I'm Jen Coronado. Everyone Is is a slightly disappointed productions production dropping every other Thursday. So make sure to rate and review and like and subscribe. Thanks for listening.