Actor Ahmed Best: How Imagination and “The Force” Can Shape the Future
Season 1 Episode 3
How do we reclaim our imagination as a force for freedom?
You might know Ahmed Best from his role as Jar Jar Binks in the Star Wars universe– He is also the creator of AfroRithms from the Future and a lifelong champion of imagination as liberation. From the streets of the South Bronx to the worlds of the Jedi, Ahmed has spent his life proving that creativity can rewrite what’s possible.
You’ll learn:
Why imagination isn’t a luxury—it’s a right
How watching the birth of hip-hop in the 70’s taught him that the future can be built from nothing
The origin of AfroRithms from the Future and the joy of collective play
What Afrofuturism reveals about freedom, history, and self-determination
How his Jedi character, Kelleran Beq, teaches that the Force is love
Ahmed and Lisa trace a throughline from ancient Egypt to Dynamic Land to the Star Wars galaxy, showing that the power to future is in all of us.
This conversation is a reminder that joy, creativity, and imagination are the real tools of freedom—and that the best way to shape the future is to play it into being.
Links from the show:
The Long Now Foundation Talk: When is Wakanda: Imagining Afrofutures
The Long Now Foundation: Feel the Future with Ahmed Best
Learn about Afrofuturism from Ahmed’s AfroRithm Futures Group
Buy Ahmed’s game: AfroRithms from the Future
New York Times Article: The Actor Who Played Jar Jar Binks is Proud of his Star Wars Legacy
Sneak Peak of Marvel Comics: Jar Jar, written by Ahmed Best
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Lisa Kay Solomon: I’m Lisa Kay Solomon, and this is How We Future, where I talk to some of my favorite change-makers about shaping tomorrow starting today.
This week’s guest is actor, producer, educator, and Afrofuturist, Ahmed Best. You might know Ahmed from his groundbreaking work as Jar Jar Binks in the Star Wars universe, from his early days in Stomp, or his extraordinary Afrofutures programs. In short, Ahmed is a cultural maker and mover.
Today, Ahmed shares the effects of watching the genesis of hip-hop in the South Bronx and how it started a global cultural revolution. He’ll talk about the origin of his new character in the Star Wars universe and how the Force can inspire future’s work. Honestly, when Ahmed shows up, you know your future is going to be better. Let’s jump in.
Ahmed Best. I’m so excited for this conversation. Hello.
Ahmed Best: Hello, my sister Lisa. How are you?
Lisa: I’m so great because we’re having this conversation. You are one of my first guests on this new venture called How We Future. In some ways, if I’m going to be honest, I think you’re a huge inspiration. No, not I think. I know you are a huge inspiration for this work-
Ahmed: Aw, thank you.
Lisa: -because we started working together four or five years ago. I got introduced to you through our mutual friend, Dr. Lonny Brooks, who we’re going to talk about this podcast, no doubt, in this conversation. You said a phrase that has stuck with me ever since. You said, do not let people future all over you. The moment I heard that, I feel like my world went from black and white to technicolor because it was a framing that has inspired the classes that I teach, how I think about how I show up every day, and is really the genesis of what this podcast series is all about, which is helping more people learn how to have agency over the future, not in these grand gestures, but in everyday actions, how we future because we do. We all future.
Ahmed: Yes, we do.
Lisa: Maybe we could just start there, my friend, and talk to me a little bit about when you think about how we future and how you future and how we want to have more say and influence over our future. Where does that come from?
Ahmed: It really comes from me growing up where I grew up in the South Bronx in New York City. When you grow up in those kind of neighborhoods, where there isn’t very much-- not a lot of resources, there isn’t a lot of money at all, generally, you’re in a food desert, you realize that there are forces that are actively trying to keep you in that place, trying to keep you from moving out, moving up, advancing, thinking, creating.
It’s very much like a prison without walls because you are so worried about the minute-to-minute, day-to-day survival that you don’t have the ability or the energy to move beyond your circumstance. It really feels like a powerless situation. It didn’t feel like that in my house because my parents were incredibly creative people. My mother is very much like a polymath and a deconstructor. She can look at something and make it.
My father worked for TV. He’s a cinematographer by education, but he was a TV cameraman for decades, but started in public television on PBS through a training program in New York City. It was something that he always wanted to do. Both my parents were very actively, professionally creative, and they took a big risk doing that because everybody in my neighborhood wasn’t that. Everyone pretty much had the job that they needed in order to survive, and my parents took that risk.
I grew up in a very creatively risky place inside the apartment that we lived in the South Bronx. Then something happened, and I talk about this. I do a talk called Be the Signal. I talk about this a lot because it really gave me agency. In the late ‘70s, early ‘80s, hip-hop music was being invented on my block in the South Bronx, in New York City. I watched the creation of not only this style of music, but this culture. It was a very specific New York creative culture that was being cultivated on the streets of the South Bronx.
It was at a time where making music was incredibly expensive. Jazz music and rock and roll music, you needed a lot of people in order to record that. You had to hire musicians. You had to hire the recording studio. You had to hire the engineers. It was increasingly becoming this expense that a lot of people who had a passion for music couldn’t afford to do. Kool Herc and all of these DJs in New York City recognized that you can put two turntables and a microphone and record music and create something that is brand new.
I was watching the future being crafted on my block in real time when I was very young. That just informed me. The only thing that stops you is creativity. If you are creative, you can make the change. All of the constructs that are around you to keep you in that place, to keep you in that position where you can’t move out, are really just imaginary. If you get with the right group of people who have that same impetus, who have that same heart, who have that same motivation, then you can literally change the future. I watched it happen.
Having agency over the future for me was incredibly tangible. It was something that was accessible, and it was something that I had seen proven from the streets of the South Bronx. That’s why my head is always just like, no one gets the future all over you because we had nothing, and we created the future from nothing, and no one could stop us.
Lisa: How early did you get a sense that this was going to be something beyond your neighborhood? Where were you able to really understand the viral and global impact, really, that this moment in time was having?
Ahmed: I felt it very, very early on. Hip-hop started in ‘73. I was born in 1973, so I’m as old as hip-hop. It didn’t really hit citywide until 1980. I was about six years old. Every summer, the DJs and the rappers would set up in this huge park across the street from my building. I lived on the 8th floor, and we had a terrace. During the summer, it was super hot, and my father was very old school, so he didn’t believe in air conditioning. I don’t know where that comes from.
Lisa: He missed that memo about the future.
Ahmed: I was like, “You know AC exists, you know?”
Lisa: It’s a thing.
Ahmed: He was like, “So what?”
Lisa: Makes you stronger.
Ahmed: Yes. I was like, “What is the adversity to air conditioning? I don’t get it.” He wasn’t an air conditioning person, so the windows would be open all night long. I have a twin brother, so my brother in my room was right next to the terrace. My sister’s room was a couple feet away. Every summer, the DJs would set up in this park right across the street, and they would jack into the streetlights for electricity. They would set up the turntables, and they would set up the amps, and they’d set up a microphone.
They would start a party, and everybody in the neighborhood would fill the park. The party would go on until four, five o’clock in the morning. My father hated it because he had to go to work at five o’clock in the morning because he was working on morning television. Morning television starts at 5:00 AM. His sleep hours were right at prime hip-hop party time. Because the windows were open, me and my brother and my sister would just sit out and look out the window all night-
Lisa: That is incredible.
Ahmed: -and listen to this music all night. Seeing everybody coming down from the projects that were across from us and different parts of the neighborhood, I knew that this was something special. I knew it was really special at six years old. I realized it was global in ‘83, ‘84. I was watching television, and there was a Barbie commercial on. This Barbie commercial, one of the lines of the dialogue, one of the young blonde actresses were saying was talking about how Barbie’s-- Barbie had a Corvette or something, some pink car or something like that.
I remember the young actor saying, “Oh my God, that is so fresh.” When she said fresh, I was like, that’s a neighborhood word. People outside of New York City–
Lisa: It signals that the future is here.
Ahmed: Boom. As soon as she said fresh in a Barbie commercial, I was like, that’s it. We’re there. This is going to change the world.
Lisa: Oh my gosh, I love that. Everything I learned about global cultural influence came from a Barbie commercial, but it is true. It is those small signals. Just connecting a couple dots that I love in hearing about your story is this idea that what happened within your family around appreciating creative risk-taking and following your passion, trying to bring new things in the world, was then unfolding around you in a more organic way. You had these reinforcing stories of possibility, of imagination, of breaking out of status quo, I think is really missing right now.
A big part of what I’m trying to do in these conversations and hosting a variety of different connections is making these ideas more concrete and more tangible. I think we’re really lacking feeling that agency, that it becomes abstract. Here you have these very concrete examples, both within your family and now within your block, and seeing it unfold, that you are reinforcing this belief of, wait a minute, other people don’t have to just make the future. I can make the future.
I’m also struck with how that’s then informed what you’re giving, what I’ve seen you give in your work as an actor, as a producer, as an educator, as a mentor, paying that forward.
Ahmed: Yes. As intentional as it is for those who are crafting the future to make you feel like you don’t have agency over it, we have to be as intentional with having agency over it. One of the reasons why I think there is such an incredible lack of imagination, especially when it comes to the future, is because there are people who do have agency over the future, and it’s very obvious. Mostly, there are people who have the means to have agency over the future. They put these obstacles and hurdles in our way to slow us down from having that imagination.
They also make us believe that, in order to be able to use this imagination that we all have, we have to reach some sort of financial comfort, some sort of level of luxury in order to use that imagination. The luxury of imagination, I believe, is a myth. I think imagination is something that we all have, and we all have a right to cultivate regardless of what our socioeconomic stands are or positions are. Unfortunately, we are in a transitional period where we are just discovering that.
It’s the same thing in higher education where everybody was like a coder in the first 10 years of the 2000s. Everybody was like, “Got to code, got to code, got to code, learn to code, learn to code.” Now here we are where coding is a bit obsolete. Now you have all of these coders going, okay, what do I do now? Now they’re trying–
Lisa: Too late to learn Play-Doh? [laughs]
Ahmed: Exactly. Is it too late to do a play? They’re going, how do I use what I do and find that creativity and find a way forward? I think it’s because we don’t teach imagination. We just let it go. We don’t pay attention to it. We don’t cultivate it. We don’t use imagination as a skill. We just think, oh, we all have it. You’re imaginative, you’re not. I believe that we can bring whatever we do up to this level of work of art. All we have to do is really train our imagination, train our creativity.
Lisa: That in and of itself is an agentic stance, that it is something we can grow. I agree. Listen, you want to be imaginative, just bring in a four-year-old into the conversation.
Ahmed: They’re the best.
Lisa: Then, unfortunately, they go to school. They get it just drilled out of them. It’s so depressing. I know that you are always looking for ways to not only bring imagination into your work, but also joyful imagination, generative imagination. I first experienced that with this incredible game that you and Dr. Lonny Brooks created around unleashing joy, imagination in positive and powerful ways. I wonder if you could talk a little bit about the game and what you had experienced playing it around the world.
Ahmed: Yes. The game is called AfroRithms from the Future. It was inspired by this game called The Thing From The Future, which is, of course, you know, Stuart Candy.
Lisa: Stuart Candy, yes. Jeff Watson.
Ahmed: Dr. Lonny Brooks really introduced me to this idea of gaming to help excite the imagination for the future. When I played Thing From The Future, I really enjoyed it. I really enjoyed the tactile nature of the cards. I liked having these things in my hands. I also enjoyed the images on the cards and what they made my mind do when I saw these images and when I saw the words on the cards. Lonny is so good at turning future parlance, combining it with Afrofuturism, and coming up with this new thing. He’s one of the most impressive scholars that I’ve ever met.
He’s in the true sense of the word of scholar. He is a legitimate according to Hoyle scholar. He’s amazing. His brain works so wonderfully, especially when it comes to things about the future and Afrofuturism. I’ve learned so much from him. When we started thinking about doing something together, we first did the Afrofuturist podcast.
Then I was like, there’s got to be a way that we can expand this thing. You know what I’m saying? Reach out to more people and put it in their hands. Lonny had been working with Eli Kosminsky, who is a programmer and a games developer in San Francisco. On our podcast, we interviewed the creators of this place in Oakland called Dynamicland. Dynamicland was this fantasy place. As soon as I walked into Dynamicland, it was this loft right in downtown Oakland. I wanted to move in. It was amazing.
Lisa: Who does not need Dynamicland? Why can’t that be the next franchise on every block? Dynamicland.
Ahmed: When I walked into Dynamicland, I looked around and I was like, this is what a library should be. All of our library should be like Dynamicland. It wasn’t just the components and the coding of the things. It was like the creativity of how you got to ideas. They had these projectors all over Dynamicland. They were on the ceiling of the loft. It was like 20-foot ceilings in Dynamicland. It was this beautiful loft space.
They created an operating system called RealOS. What RealOS did was interface with these projectors that were pointing down at the surfaces of Dynamicland. Rather than programming something into a keyboard, there were these microphones around Dynamicland where you would wish for things. They had these little tiny robots. You would say something like, “I wish this robot could go from one part of the table to the other part of the table on a 10-foot table.” Then RealOS would hear this and print out a card. On this card, there would be these dots on the card.
You would lay these dots down on the surface of the table. The projectors would read these dots, interface with this robot, and make the robot move from one part of the table to the next part of the table.
Lisa: Magic.
Ahmed: It felt like magic.
Lisa: Magic.
Ahmed: I was like, wow, this is amazing because it made learning tangible. They had all of these after-school programs where all of these kids would go to Dynamicland and use RealOS to make stuff. They could make movies and music.
Lisa: So empowering.
Ahmed: It was amazing.
Lisa: So exciting.
Ahmed: Lonny and I did the podcast with Dynamicland and fell in love with the place and the people. Because I live in Los Angeles, I could just call and talk to them. Lonny actually went there. He started going there every day and got in really good. I was extremely jealous. He and Eli met there. Because of Stuart Candy Thing From The Future, him and Eli, we’re just like, well, we should make a card game about Afrofuturism.
The first iteration of AfroRithms were Lonny and Eli at Dynamicland. At first, it was going to be like a Dynamicland thing where you would say, I wish there were black scholars on a planet that could be influenced by James Baldwin. Then RealOS would spit something out. Then it would project an image. I went to Dynamicland, and I saw this and I was like, I think you got something here. There’s something here. It’s not quite there yet, but there’s something there.
Fast forward to we’re at Institute for the Future, and there’s like a weekend of Afro-- I think Lonny helped produce this event where it was like a weekend of Afrofuturism and then African Futurists and people were like beaming in from Ghana and Uganda and talking about Futurism. Eli and Lonny were going to present AfroRithms for the first time to a group of people.
They called some people up, me and a couple of other people, and we were standing up there as Guinea pigs to play AfroRithms, and Lonny was facilitating. I looked at what they were doing, and I was just like, I think I have a way for this thing to work and be dynamic. One of my secret passions is I’ve always wanted to be a game show host.
Lisa: Who doesn’t? Who doesn’t?
Ahmed: Yes, because when I was growing up–
Lisa: I mean, not all of us can, but you know. Yes.
Ahmed: What was better? I used to watch game shows all the time. My mom was a huge game show person. It was like the Match Game and Jeopardy and all those old-school game shows-
Lisa: Price is Right.
Ahmed: -Price is Right, from the ‘80s.
Lisa: The Newlywed Game.
Ahmed: Newlywed Game. I love game shows, and I always wanted to have one of them skinny mics. You know how they used to have those skinny mics in the ‘80s, and it was just like, “Welcome to the Match Game.”
Lisa: Merv Griffin.
Ahmed: Merv Griffin. The Merv Griffin Show with the skinny mic. I always loved that. You’d have all these celebrity guests, and Nipsey Russell would always do a poem or something.
Lisa: Nipsey Russell. [laughs] I know what I’m getting you for your next birthday. I got you. I got you.
Ahmed: All right. Give me a skinny mic. I looked at what they did, and I was just like, let me game show this thing. I think this could be a good game show. I said, “Hey, Lonny, can I MC this thing?” He was like-- Lonny is probably the sweetest, most generous human being on the planet.
Lisa: Sweetest, loving. Kind. Yes.
Ahmed: He was like, “Yes, sure.” I turned it into a game show because I saw it. I saw where this thing could go and what it could do. I just started running around the room and playing AfroRithm. That was the first time a roomful of people were just like, you guys got something. This is fun. After, there was standing ovation. People really loved playing, and it was fun.
The thing that I thought was missing from a lot of these future forecasting or future imaginative games is the fun part. It’s not fun to play these games sometimes. It’s fun for a certain group of us who want to think that way. How do we get 12-year-olds to think this is fun? How do we get 80-year-olds who don’t think about the future to think this is fun? Fun is a good way in. We had a lot of fun at that first one.
That’s when I was just like, okay, I think we got something. Let’s start putting this thing together so that the game has some kind of foundation so it works. That’s when we started putting together the parameters of AfroRithms with having the xy axis of creating a multiverse and creating a planet in the multiverse and then populating the planet with artifacts. It was all Afrofuturist-inspired. It’s a good way to get you into thinking of the future from a different point of view, from a different perspective.
I’ve noticed this at Institute for the Future. I’ve also noticed this at the Dubai Future Forum, that there’s a type of monopoly on the way we think about the future. The point of view is mostly from a Western-centric perspective, where we’re not actually imagining what a future could be. We’re imagining how do we sustain our existing systems into the future. That might not be the future that we want.
It’s definitely not a future that we have agency over because it assumes that corporations will exist for 100, 1,000, 10,000 years. That might not be the case. We’re not asking the question, well, what if corporations were designed to self-destruct? AfroRithms is a catalyst for that type of thinking, for systems thinking in ways that are not the systems that we are used to.
Lisa: There’s so much to unpack in this oral history of where this game came from. I want to dive into a couple of details. At a high level, what I’m hearing, and I agree with you, that, as the world becomes more complex, more dynamic, more overwhelming, we have a default to search for the familiar. What I have seen lately is a proliferation of futurists and foresight practitioners that are using frameworks that are important to help us understand, but processes that feel very bounded and technical and without probably even realizing it, have the status quo embedded into it.
What I hear in this fantastic story about the birth of AfroRithms from the future is really leaning into the fun and the feeling of it, which is where the future can exist in ways that might serve all of us as opposed to some of us.
Ahmed: Absolutely.
Lisa: Your ability to sense that moment, to say, wait a minute, there’s some raw materials here that we have to unleash in new ways that really get at the humanity here, was a huge courageous risk. The other part that I want to dive into a bit more here to make sure people understand some of the words that are coming out in this conversation is using Lonny’s historical scholarship on Afro Futures as a grounding for, again, that more inclusive and expansive set of possibilities. That starts with ourselves, that we could unleash that.
I want to just take a moment. We’re going to point folks to Lonny’s work, to his master class on Afro Futures that he did at the Long Now Foundation, which is where I first got introduced to you and your work during the deep pandemic months. That was one of the bright spots. Can you just share maybe in a nutshell what is Afro Futures and how does it show up in the world right now?
Ahmed: Yes. Afro Futurism is really based on this idea that Futurism, the Futurist movement didn’t start with the Italian fascists in the 1920s. Most of the time, when you say futurist to Europeans, that’s what they think of. They think about the 1920s. They think of the fascist movement. They think of Italy. Futurism really started probably 20,000 years earlier. What we try to do is we try to go back and think about the future moving forward starting then.
One of the biggest influences for me for future thinking is the Nile Valley in Egypt. The Egyptians had to forecast when the river was going to rise and when the river was going to fall because that’s how they had food. That’s where agriculture came from. That’s where they moved. Animals, that’s how the civilization was able to survive. They had to realize this river rises at a certain point in the year and that it falls at a certain point in the year. In order for us to survive, we have to know that.
They developed these tools to help them track the astronomy in that region and create a calendar of the rise and fall of the Nile. Then they started building an entire culture around that. They started building their art around it with the Sphinx. They started building their monuments around it with the pyramids. It was all of these things that really came from forecasting when the river was going to rise and fall, which is really forecasting climate, which is forecasting weather, which is forecasting the future.
They got really good at it. So good at it that they started naming the stars. They started positioning the civilization according to when the earth moved and the stars would align and the Nile would rise and fall. To me, that’s the beginning of a futurist thinking.
Lisa: Anticipating, imagining.
Ahmed: Anticipate, exactly. Imagine, forecasting.
Lisa: Preparing for.
Ahmed: Classifying, developing systems. The whole point–
Lisa: The human aspect of the art and the story and the communication.
Ahmed: Yes. Exactly. That’s where their god myths came from. That’s where their myths of death came from. That’s where their language hieroglyphics came from. This idea of forecasting really started creating a culture. Then you would read about the Egyptian mystery schools. The mystery would be mathematics and philosophy. The story goes that everybody from Socrates to Pythagoras went to the Egyptian mystery schools, learned the mysteries, and then brought them back to the Mediterranean valley in Greece. That was the birthplace of mathematics in the West. That was the birthplace of philosophy in the West as the story goes.
I was always influenced by that. What we were taught was science started in England, and Isaac Newton came up with calculus. It didn’t have an origin. It didn’t have a beginning. It didn’t have a start. It definitely didn’t start with people with dark skin. Afrofuturism assumes a future past that predates European civilization, which helps a lot because then you can look at all of those things that ancient civilizations created and imagine forward without things like war and famine and colonization.
That’s where we start with imagining what the future could be. With AfroRithms, we always say we have a reverence for the past, an awareness of the present, but the future is all creative. Future is creativity. We train your creativity through the stories of past African futurists in Afrofuturism. Then we look at the present of Afrofuturism, which is taking these ideas from the past and imagining a present with the ethos of what the past are.
Imagine if there was no Inquisition. Imagine if there was no medieval times. We go from Egypt to Socrates to Enlightenment to the space race. We would be a lot further along without demagogues and zealots moving us backwards. That’s what we try to do in AfroRithms with Afrofuturism. Afrofuturism really is the imagining of a future without these ideas of oppression. I believe freedom is the ability to self-actualize without the threat of oppression.
How do we free our imagination and move forward into the future? That’s what Afrofuturism, I believe, can do. A lot of people get hung up on the name. It’s like Afrofuturism, I’m an African futurist, I’m a blah, blah, blah.
Lisa: Right.
Ahmed: I’m very pluralistic when it comes to that stuff. Call yourself whatever, bring on all the names. I don’t think we need to reduce or classify anything into this one thing. I think we can have all the things. One of the beautiful things about Afrofuturism is it’s as complex as the folks who have descended from Africa, which is all of us. We really try to embrace complexity, embrace nuance, embrace pluralism. That’s how we build from there using Afrofuturism.
Lisa: Thank you for that. I think a lot of people are really going to be excited to turn to the history books in order to open up their minds about the future. I just want to call out, Ahmed, first of all, how lucky I am to be your friend and fellow journey member in this life because I always learn something every time we talk. We’ve talked now for many years. One of the things that I’ve loved about learning from you and with you and Lonny is the importance of the past in order to unlock the future and to do it in bold and creative ways.
I think the other part that I’ve learned when I’ve studied Afrofuturism and tried to bring it into the classes that we teach and how we talk about the kinds of futures that we want to be, is that it honors art and story and creativity and culture in ways that don’t have to be binary, in ways that can be really abundant and generative and possible. I think that is another practice that we need to lean into to see these possibilities and allow the space for them to come to fruition in a way that doesn’t trigger us into a threat response.
I want to maybe use that as a springboard to talk about some of your more current work that you’re doing. You’re always producing plays. I know that. I know you’ve got lots and lots of things coming up in the Star Wars universe, which is super exciting to see your expansive role, not only in the shows but also in LEGOville, which is so fun.
Actually, before we go into some of your work on what you’re doing with another dear friend of ours, Drew Endy, in bioengineering and earthling culture. Let’s just pause there because we can’t not talk about Star Wars, honestly. Tell us what’s happening right now in Ahmed Best in Star Wars that you can share.
Ahmed: A lot is happening. Season 2 of Rebuild the Galaxy is happening. There is a Kelleran Beq comic book that’s coming out in October,-
Lisa: Ooh. Oh my gosh.
Ahmed: -I believe, which I have to start writing.
Lisa: Now, you created that character.
Ahmed: I did.
Lisa: Tell us about that. Like I said, I always wanted to be a game show host. Right before the pandemic, Star Wars called me, and they were like, we’re doing a kids’ game show. Do you want to do it? I was like, two of my favorite things are kids and game shows. I was like, yes, I definitely want to do it. It was called Jedi Temple Challenge. Jedi Temple Challenge was a game where young Padawans would become Jedi by the end of the game.
They would go through all of these challenges, these Padawan challenges. At the end, they would get their lightsabers, and they would get their robes. It was very much a Nickelodeon-esque easy challenges for kids game, which I really loved. At our first meeting, they were just like, we want you to be the Jedi teacher of this thing, but you can create whoever you want to create. I was like, say less. I’ve been preparing for this for a very, very long time, since 1977. [laughs]
Lisa: Say less. Yes. I’m ready.
Ahmed: I really wanted to create a character that was excited about being a teacher. In Star Wars, there are a lot of reluctant teachers. Obi-Wan doesn’t really want to train Anakin, but Qui-Gon Jinn dies. He’s like, I want to fulfill Qui-Gon Jinn’s wish of training Anakin. Yoda says, yes, you can train him. Obi-Wan was not that great of-- and I know I’m going to get flat for this, but he wasn’t that great of a trainer for Anakin because he couldn’t control those dark impulses. Anakin eventually becomes Darth Vader.
Then Yoda doesn’t really want to train Luke Skywalker. When he goes to Dagobah, Obi-Wan tells him to go to Dagobah. Yoda is trying to find every way to say no. He’s like, “He is too old.” Too old to begin, and I learned so much. I’m not afraid. Yes, you will be. Yoda doesn’t really, but he says, okay, I’ll train Luke. Doesn’t do that great of a job because, before he’s done, he goes and fights Darth Vader, and he’s like, you must stay. You must not go. You must complete the training.
There is another. That’s where we learn Princess Leia is there. There were all of these reluctant trainers in Star Wars, and I was like, well, what if there’s a Jedi whose calling is to train young Jedis? That’s what he loves to do. He’s not one of those people who just–
Lisa: He wants to.
Ahmed: He wants to show up every day. It was pretty much based on the teachers that I’ve had in my life who were just like, yes, this is it. I love teaching, and that’s what I’m going to do. It’s like, I don’t want to be a CEO of a company or a superstar. I want to be-- actually, this is it. This is my calling. That’s what I wanted him to be. That was first. First, it was just like, I am psyched to show up and see these young people, and I really want them to do well. I am firmly invested in their success. They are everything to me.
The second thing I wanted to do was tie in a whole bunch of Star Wars loose threads. This is how I see Kelleran Beq. He’s the guy who can take all the loose threads and put them together and really sort out where everything is going and what everybody is doing. I decided to craft his name in a way that ties loose threads. In Attack of the Clones, I have a cameo in the bar. It was on my day off. Anthony Daniels, who plays C-3PO, was like, “Come on, we’re going to be in the movie.”
He gives me this costume. He goes, “Put this on.” I’m like, “Anthony, I’m not supposed to be working today. It’s my day off.” He was like, “Come on, we’re going to do it.” We put these costumes on. It’s like these blue pilot costumes. I was like, “Oh, wow, this is--” I was getting into it. We go into makeup. I was really cool with all the makeup people because the makeup that they were doing for Star Wars was just amazing. They were just painting people, and it was just this wonderful playground.
Lisa: By the way, pro tip, you always want to become besties with the makeup people. If you take nothing from this conversation, that’s the number one.
Ahmed: That’s it. They’re called the beauty department for a reason.
Lisa: Make them your besties.
Ahmed: Yes. I was cool with beauty. I was just like, “Yes, I’m doing this cameo.” Then they were just like, “Okay, let’s put the makeup on.” I was like, “Oh, you know what would be cool? If I have this huge scar over my eye.” They were just like, “Oh, yes.” Then they started getting into it. They started putting like, say, “Oh, let’s make it like this, and let’s make it look like it has veins coming out of it.” By the time I got out of makeup, I had this character, and I was fully invested. I leaned into this character.
I’m in the bar scene all day long. George comes in because they position us and everything. Because Anthony is Anthony Daniels, and everybody knew me from Phantom, Clones, the second movie, they’re just like, “What are you guys doing?” I was like, “Yes, this is Anthony’s idea.” Then they were just like-- they were getting into it. They were just like, “Okay, you got to stand over there. Anthony, you stand over by the bar.”
Then George comes in and sees me and Anthony and starts laughing. He goes, “What are you guys doing?” I was like, “It’s Anthony’s idea.” He was like, “All right.” He gives us close-ups. George is like, “You guys, I’m going to give you a close-up.”
Lisa: How we future, right there. How we future.
Ahmed: Yes, exactly.
Lisa: You make yourself interesting enough, you’re going to get some attention. Love it.
Ahmed: Totally. Obi-Wan comes into the bar, and we’re doing the run-through. Ewan McGregor sees me, and he starts laughing. He goes, “I’m going to walk right by you when we walk into the bar.” Obi-Wan comes into the bar, and he walks by me, and I give him a look. Then George was like, “That’s your close-up.” I give him a look. George hits me with the close-up. All of a sudden, it’s a thing now.
What happens in Star Wars is if you show up on screen, you get a character name, you get a history, everybody just fills in the blanks as Star Wars fans. This character gets an action figure. It was like–
Lisa: What?
Ahmed: Yes. I was just straight up, just playing.
Lisa: I love the red thread. Makeup, cameo-
Ahmed: Makeup, cameo-
Lisa: -action figure.
Ahmed: -action figure.
Lisa: Brilliant.
Ahmed: This character gets an action figure, and they call the action figure Achk Med-Beq. That’s what they named the action figure, Achk Med-Beq, which is like-- they didn’t have a name. They just used my name and threw in a Q. Then this action figure becomes this weird collectible. People are just like, you got to have the Achk Med-Beq if you’re a Star Wars fan. I thought my mom was the only person who bought these action figures. I really loved this action figure. I thought it was cool.
Because it was just a cameo, I never really got to flesh out the story. In my own headcanon, I started putting together who Achk Med-Beq was. For Jedi Temple Challenge, I knew my Jedi was going to have the last name Beq because I’m tying together the cameo Achk Med-Beq to this Jedi. The other thread for this character that I wanted to put together was-- the names of Star Wars characters are always incredibly interesting and where they come from. There’s a character in Attack of the Clones named Orn Free Taa. It’s like a weird name. It came from corn fritters. They just took the C away.
Lisa: Everything’s got to come from somewhere.
Ahmed: Right. It was like Orn Free Taa. Kit Fisto is another weird one. The Gungans, which Jar Jar was one, came from Jet’s son. I mean, George’s son Jet, who would call garbage trucks Gungans because, when they would drive by the house, that’s what they sounded like, “Gungan.” That’s where the Gungans came from. I have always been interested in name derivations. I love that, how names become what they are now, like how Wilhelm became William.
Lisa: The historian in you.
Ahmed: I just love that. I just love name derivations. When I was in Tunisia, I told the Tunisians my name. I was like, “My name is Ahmed.” They were like, “No, Ah-med is your name. Ah-med.” I was like, “Okay. I’m not trying to offend you with my name.” They were like, “No, that is the name of our god, Ah-med.” I was like, “Okay. I’m Ah-med. Don’t hurt me.”
I always loved-- I love that. One name that I could never really reconcile with was Kylo Ren from the sequels. I was like, where does that come from? I wanted to tie the prequels and the sequels. Kylo Ren, I saw as a derivative of Kelleran. Kelleran is the original name. Then Kylo Ren is how Wilhelm becomes William. That’s how Kelleran Beq came together. The whole idea is pulling these loose threads and connecting the loose threads.
Lisa: Loose threads.
Ahmed: Yes. That’s how I came up with Kelleran Beq.
Lisa: Is that what the comic book is going to be about? Is that Kelleran Beq’s-- one of his superpowers, the loose threads? Because that is, by the way, a superpower, which you have.
Ahmed: It’s definitely how I describe the force.
Lisa: Wait, what? We’ve been talking for 45 minutes, and I’m just now getting to the underbelly of the force?
Ahmed: Yes. The force, right, according to George, it’s this thing that connects us and binds us, which is love, love regardless of who you are. It’s very kind of like Buddhist ethos. Regardless of you-- and it could be an Abrahamic ethos as well, love the stranger. Love your enemies. This idea of love ties all of us together. Those of us who wield the force have a special connection to love to make it tangible. It feels like you have an invisible thread connected to everything in the universe, and you have the power to pull on that thread and either bring it to you or away from you.
How do you operate with all of these threads connected to you all the time? I akin it to how you move through water. If you’re moving through water, you can still move. There’s a bit of friction on you, but you can still move. Because of all the water, everything around you feels you move as well. If you ever go snorkeling, and you’re swimming towards a school of fish and then they come up to you and then they feel you and they go away, that’s what it feels like moving with the force.
Lisa: Ahmed, I could talk to you for hours and hours, but I know we’re just about at our time and I want to use–
Ahmed: No.
Lisa: I know, I know, but I have to–
Ahmed: No. Lisa, no. You got to do a part two.
Lisa: Yes, we’re just getting started. Clearly, a part two. We didn’t even get to earthling culture-
Ahmed: I know, so much.
Lisa: -what you do. We’re going to get there. We’re going to get there. Maybe we’ll even bring in our dear friend, Drew Endy, and we’ll talk about that. I can’t help but build on that beautiful sentiment of the force to what this conversation is about, who you are in the world, what I’ve experienced in being a part of your orbit, and what I hope this conversation series does for others, which is to find strength, find optimism, find history, and the humanity to bring us forward in positive and joyful ways.
I’m not even sure I even understood that the force was about love. I’m just going to say it right now. Maybe I’m naming that for lots of other Star Wars fans that never quite got that connection. This idea that love is a regenerative force, that understanding our connection to others and utilizing the force as a learned skill, as a way of moving about the world, to make it better for others in ways that honor our humanity, that is magnificent. That is magnificent. That’s how I experience you.
I have always thought of you as sunshine in my life, the way that sunshine warms you up. It can nourish your soul. It actually gives you vitamins to be filled with more vitality. Sunshine allows things to grow. I know I am not alone in feeling your love and sunshine, Ahmed.
I just want to thank you so much for being a part of this extended journey, for giving us the chance to talk about some incredible origin stories of things you’ve put out into the world that you’ve shepherded and showcased. We want to use that as an invitation for others to learn more about all these great things, like AfroRithms from the Future and your work with Lonny.
Ahmed: Well, thank you. You’ve always been, for me, a North Star when it comes to agency of the future and actually action when it comes to the future. You are the person that I call first when it’s time to get things done, when it’s time to take all of the talk and time to put the boots on the ground and time to get it moving. I believe in you. I really do. I believe in you. I have a lot of faith in you, and I am glad you are in this world doing this work because you make the world a better place.
You really do. We need this now more than we’ve ever needed it before. Every system goes through these points of chaos before exponential growth. Right now we are on the cusp of exponential growth. I know it doesn’t feel that way, and it doesn’t look that way, but everything that’s pushing on us right now to feel like chaos is us pushing back towards growth. We need tools like this and people like you to keep us in it. I once had a friend who said, you can’t fight for peace. You have to peace for peace.
Lisa: Beautiful.
Ahmed: Peace is not passive. You have to act peace. We have to put peace into action in order to achieve it. It’s not an awakening that’s going to happen eventually. It is an action that we are going to realize collectively, and the only way to do that is to put out the possibilities of it any way we can. I try to do that in the narrative space. I try to do that in the entertainment space and in the educational space. We have to be able to do it in every space that we hold, put out what the peace action is, and craft the future that we want to be in. We can make it.
Lisa: Yes, we can. Amen to that. Thank you, my friend. So amazing.
Ahmed: Thank you.
Lisa: More to come.
Ahmed: Love you dearly.
Lisa: Thank you so much for joining me on How We Future. As you can see, Ahmed doesn’t just channel the force, he is a force. It’s not every day you get a spoiler for what’s to come in the Star Wars universe while also getting a jolt of personal inspiration. I hope you’ll tune in next time for more conversations on shaping the future optimistically, practically, and intentionally. I’m Lisa Kay Solomon, and I look forward to spending more time with you in the future. Have a great week.