Ahmed Best is known for playing Jar Jar Binks and Kelleran Beq in the Star Wars universe, but that’s not the only franchise the actor is involved in. Best also lent his voice to some popular video games, including The Last of Us Part II and Fallout 76. Both The Last of Us and Fallout have made the successful transition to television. The Last of Us is currently in production on its second season for HBO, and Fallout was recently renewed for a second season by Amazon’s Prime Video. ComicBook recently had the chance to chat with Best at the grand opening of Bricks and Minifigs in Pasadena, California. In addition to talking about Star Wars, we also brought up Best’s connection to the games, and wondered if he was interested in being a part of those shows.
“Nobody called me,” Best revealed when asked about potentially making a cameo on either series. “I mean, I’ll play anything. Last of Us II and Fallout were both very, very fun. And the people who do those games are just wonderful and build universes that are just fantastic. So I mean, I just wanted to make a cameo in either one of those ’cause I’m in the game. But I don’t know, whatever they have out there in the world in either of those universes, I’m down.”
What Is Popup Con?
We spoke to Best at Popup Con, a cool event he started a few years ago, and he explained how it came to be.
“So Popup Con actually started before the pandemic,” Best shared. “I always wanted to do something primarily to look at small niche businesses. When it came to entertainment stuff, I grew up in comic book stores all my life. I grew up in toy stores all my life … And I always loved the cultures that were around it. Every time I would go to a comic book store when I was a kid, it’d be all the same people … You’d have all of these people who were so passionate, not just about what was in the store, but the store itself. It’s something that I always really loved. And when big box stores came in, that kind of disappeared.”
“The big conventions are cool, but sometimes it gets a little much,” Best explained. “Sometimes it’s very difficult to have the stamina to do all of them, and sometimes it gets kind of transactional, more transactional than I like. I kind of like the fact that you get to talk to people. I like the fact that you get to know people and you get a little bit of time. So I was like, ‘Well, what if there was a con that would just pop up in these very niche mom-and-pop stores?’ Especially things like comic book stores or video stores or Lego stores or toy stores, and it would be the people affiliated with the store, but you can also spend a little bit more time with people coming through, and that’s when Popup Con comes.”
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