Vietnamese American to Play the ‘Biggest New Part’ in ‘Star Wars: The Last Jedi’

April 17, 2017

“The Last Jedi” panel at the Star Wars Celebration on Friday unveiled the character Rose, a “Resistance” maintenance worker played by Asian American Kelly Marie Tran.

While it was revealed that she will be joining the main heroes from “The Force Awakens”, not much else was made known about Tran’s character during the panel.

Asked by USA Today how similar she is to Rose, Tran responded simply: “It’s a hard line to say where one person starts and one person ends. Carrie Fisher said something like that and I feel the same way.”

According to IGN, Tran also didn’t want to reveal much and was tight-lipped on her “biggest new part”.

In fact, she even kept her involvement with the film secret from everyone she knew: “I told them I was doing an indie movie in Canada. At one point, I actually got some maple syrup so I could bring it back to them so they actually thought I was in Canada.”

She explained, “I just want to do it justice, so thank you, everyone, for letting me be here.”

Shedding more light on the role, director Rian Johnson compared Tran’s character to a young Luke Skywalker.

“[She] has the biggest new part in the movie and ironically is played by the smallest actor,” Johnson said of Tran’s part. “She’s not a soldier. She’s not looking to be a hero, but she gets pulled into a very big adventure with Finn.”

Tran, who has appeared in a series of CollegeHumor Originals, eventually migrated to TV via NBC’s sitcom adaptation of “About a Boy” and Amazon’s “Gortimer Gibbon’s Life on Normal Street”. She joins Daisy Ridley, John Boyega, Oscar Isaac, Mark Hamill, the late Carrie Fisher, Adam Driver, Lupita Nyong’o, Domhnall Gleeson, Gwendoline Christie and Andy Serkis for “Star Wars Episode VIII”, which will hit theaters on December 15 of this year.

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