- This past summer, I wanted to take my
9-year-old son with me to New York City.
I really wanted to take him back to where I grew up.
And I wanted to spend a significant amount of time there
so he could really get to know the city that I love
and the city that I came up in
and the city that I kind of made me.
We stayed in Brooklyn and I lived in Brooklyn
for a lot of years.
And there were certain things that I did comin' up
that would inspire me.
And one of those things was
to walk across the Brooklyn Bridge.
I would walk across the bridge and I would see the city
and I would see the towers when they were there,
and I would look at that and say,
ah, human being did this.
It would make me want to keep going, keep moving.
So I wanted to walk across the bridge with my son.
Then I got to this point on the bridge
that I hadn't seen in a long time,
and it was really the reason why I hadn't
walked across the bridge in 18 years.
It was spot where I almost ended my life.
I grabbed my son and my phone
and I took a picture of that moment.
The reason why I almost ended my life on the Brooklyn Bridge
was because 20 years ago,
I played Jar Jar Binks in Star Wars.
I faced immediate backlash that really made me feel like
my life was over.
I never thought it was a possibility
to be in that movie.
And I was doing a show called Stomp in New York
and I got lucky.
The casting direct for Star Wars was in the audience
for one of the shows and she asked me to audition,
and I got it.
And it was one of those magical things.
It was one of those special things
that happens that you don't really hear about.
Next thing I knew, I was at Industrial Lights and Magic and
George Lucas was directing me for a screen test.
I loved the work.
And throughout my life, I've always wanted to be
one of those actors that disappeared into roles.
Jar Jar was that times 100
because I could literally disappear into Jar Jar.
I was not there.
And that to me was just the height of the art form.
The thing that makes Jar Jar special
from a lot of the other CGI characters that
have happened since, ILM was writing the code for this
as I was doing things.
So the code that's being used now for CGI,
I was a part of creating that.
And on set, everybody was like,
oh, this is gonna be great, this is amazing,
and get ready to be a star and all that.
And I believed it, you know.
As a 24-year-old young actor looking at your career
and looking at your future, the best thing to feel is,
all right here we go.
This is gonna open the doors to so many different things
and so many different opportunities.
Then the movie came out.
And
there was just so much hate and venom and anger
directed at me.
And I took it personally.
And a lot of times, you know, I hear people say,
we're not talking about you, we're talking about Jar Jar.
You're talking about me.
I put a lot of me into that work,
and if you talk to any artist,
and you talk to any artist
who really cares about their work,
you're talking about them.
The hardest part for me in that entire situation was
all of the criticism that came from
a racially motivated point of view.
Growing up, being black, and wanting to be an artist,
which is a very challenging and brave thing to do.
It's not easy.
We're always faced as black artists
with this idea of being a sellout, right?
We have our guard up when it comes to
being portrayed as an Uncle Tom,
a racial stereotype, or anything that makes you,
as a black person, look less than.
It hit me.
It came right for me.
I was called every racial stereotype you can imagine.
There was this like criticism on being this Jamaican
broken dialect, which was offensive
because I'm off West Indian decent, I'm not Jamaican.
It was debilitating.
I didn't know how to respond.
I was a 26-year old kid.
I didn't have an agent, I didn't have a manager,
I didn't have a publicist,
I didn't know anything about that.
I was just alone and that depression hit me hard.
I was just broken.
The only thing I could think of to make me feel better
was to walk across the Brooklyn Bridge.
But this time, when I walked across the bridge,
I didn't see the lights of Manhattan,
I didn't see the towers, I didn't see the potential of
hard work and ingenuity.
I didn't see anything, I just saw a fog.
I felt tired of having to explain myself.
I felt tired of having to defend myself
and defend my work.
I felt tired of having to fight back against
racism and the racial stereotype.
I nev, it's just...
I just wanted to play a part.
I was exhausted, you know?
So I
walked across this steel girder
between the walkway and the bridge,
and I was standing at the edge of the bridge
and I was looking down at the East River
and I had this thought.
And I had remembered I had went skydiving a year before.
And as I was flying through the air skydiving,
I remember having this thought.
I remember, if this shoot doesn't open,
I had a good life.
Standing on the edge of the Brooklyn Bridge at that time,
I had the same thought.
I looked out at the East River and I looked out
at the Statue of Liberty and said, whelp,
I had a good life.
As I was standing there, a gust of wind just
came by and it was really strong.
And knocked me off-balance.
And I caught myself.
That's when I woke up.
I caught myself.
I thought to myself, if I was really about it,
if I really wanted to do this,
if I was really about that life,
I would have let that gust of wind just take me.
But I didn't.
Life just came back to me.
It just came rushing to me.
Something in my consciousness that said,
you have to make it to tomorrow.
So I crawled across that steel girder
separating the edge of the bridge from the walkway,
and I was scared.
That's when I got scared.
And I walked back to my apartment.
And I dealt with the next day.
20 years later, I'm on the bridge with my son,
and I'm looking at the spot.
Just looking at it.
And I take this picture.
I don't know what to do with this picture,
so I just look at it.
You know, I don't know what to do with it.
And I was really afraid to share this picture.
You know, I was really scared because
you put on this armor every day
and you make it look like things don't affect you.
I can't hide this anymore.
This happened to me,
and I felt this way.
I took the picture of me and my boy
and I put it on Twitter.
And all of a sudden it went everywhere.
People were calling me and ,
and everybody started talking about it.
And it was surprising because I never really,
I never really thought anybody would care.
We talk a lot about things going viral,
and usually when things go viral,
it's something negative.
I didn't feel like what I posted went viral.
I feel like it went communal.
And I felt like it went communal because of the support
that I got.
That I never thought was there.
And I'm glad I shared this moment
because the response the I got back were from people that
shared a similar moment.
Were all here,
were all here now.
You know, we made it through the next day.
'Cause I shared that between me and my son,
I can get through 20 more years of next days.