Kelly Marie Tran reflects on ‘Star Wars’ backlash nearly a decade later: ‘it wasn’t my fault’

Kelly Marie Tran said she no longer blames herself for the harassment that followed her role as Rose Tico in 2017’s “Star Wars: The Last Jedi.” In a recent interview with Comic Book Resources, the 37-year-old Vietnamese American star recalled deleting her Instagram posts in 2018 after months of racist and sexist abuse targeting her casting in the franchise. She said her initial response was to treat the backlash as “evidence that I wasn’t supposed to be there.”

Tran said the backlash she faced aligned with what she has since observed affecting other women of color cast in major franchises. “Thank you for acknowledging this journey that I’ve had, and I would venture to say that I don’t think I’m the only one who has experience that,” she told CBR. “We’ve seen over and over time again women of color in these, sort of established franchises having this similar experience.”

She said her understanding of that period has changed over time. “When I think about that time, which was 10 years ago now, the thing that I think I didn’t understand was that it wasn’t my fault,” Tran said. She described how she processed the harassment at the time, adding, “My first reaction was to internalize everything that I was receiving. And use it as evidence that I wasn’t supposed to be there.”

Tran appeared in “Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker” in 2019 following her debut in “The Last Jedi,” returning to the role of Rose Tico after the backlash that followed the earlier film’s release.

Tran said her response to similar circumstances would differ now after years of therapy and support. “If it happened to me now as someone who has been through 10 years of therapy and joined support groups and done all this work on myself, I think that I would have had a very different experience,” she said.

She later voiced the lead character in Disney’s “Raya and the Last Dragon” in 2021, becoming the first Southeast Asian actor to lead a Disney animated feature. She credited recent collaborators with offering roles that allowed her to embrace aspects of her identity she previously questioned. “That is the biggest gift,” Tran said, referring to opportunities to celebrate qualities she once viewed as “reasons I shouldn’t be here.”

Tran is scheduled to appear in writer-director Vera Miao’s “Rock Springs,” a horror film centered on a grieving family who move to a new town and encounter forces in the surrounding woods. She will also star opposite David Dastmalchian in “Kodak SuperXX,” directed by Auden Bui, which follows a darkroom developer who becomes involved with a stranger harboring hidden motives.