The Mandalorian’s executive producers Jon Favreau and Dave Filoni stopped by EW’s Dagobah Dispatch podcast where they were asked about the possibility of Ahmed Best reprising the role of Kelleran Beq in future seasons.
“It’s always a possibility,” Filoni says. “We love Ahmed, and he did such a great job. It was a real thrill for us to get him involved.”
And it seems Best was involved from pretty early on in the process. “We talked with him about it,” Filoni says. “We come up with these ideas and we think: Who might work with it? We make sure before we get too far to bring them into the process, so it’s not just like, ‘Here’s who you’re going to play.’ It’s like, ‘What do you think of this? We want you to be this person. What are your thoughts on it?’ [We try to] make it a real collaboration and think it’s really key to the success of it.”
Just as surprising to fans as the reemergence of Best was the fact that The Mandalorian was bringing in a character that had started on an online game show for kids. “He had done a lot of work on that character of Kelleran Beq for Jedi Temple Challenge,” Favreau says. “So he’s been involved with Star Warsall the way through and definitely had formulated this character. And we love to draw from all of Star Wars, and even things that aren’t canon. If they feel right, we’ll pull ’em in. And now that character exists squarely in Star Warscanon.”
Favreau then tips his hand a bit in terms of whether we will see Best as Beq again: “I think people dig seeing that character. I want to learn more about that character.”
Filoni notes that Best’s time on The Mandalorian may have induced a case of déjà vu. “It was fun watching him on set, because we had clones and we had Naboo guards,” he says. “And I think for him it was a real flashback. There wouldn’t have been any clones on set [during the prequels] because they were all digital, but we actually had people in armor. I think he really paused and took it in.”
Watch the first three season of The Mandalorian on Disney+ now.
