Why ‘Star Wars’ ’ Tran sees herself in Rose Tico
“Star Wars” franchise player Kelly Marie Tran knows that she and her character, Resistance fighter Rose Tico, have gone on remarkably similar journeys in recent years.
Introduced in 2017’s “Star Wars: The Last Jedi” and returning in the saga-concluding “Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker,” Rose is a character who lived much of her life at the relative periphery before fate and her own dedication brought her to the heart of the action.
“She had a crazy journey last time, coming from this place where she was very much someone in the background of the Resistance and being really enamored with the sort of frontmen of the Resistance, and then becoming one of them,” Tran said. “And I think there’s been a year in between these films, and she’s sort of now in a place where she’s very much seeing the dayto-day operations of what the Resistance is, and I think that definitely has affected who she is.”
In a franchise focused on the Skywalkers — the Force-powered family with regal lineage — Rose represented something different: the galactic proletariat, the blue-collar membership of the Resistance.
And Tran — the 30-year-old daughter of Vietnamese
refugees who was the first woman of color to play a leading role in the 40-year history of “Star Wars” — says she was acutely aware of the responsibility that came with the role.
“If there’s anybody that overanalyzed her responsibilities, it was me. I definitely felt the weight of authentically portraying a character who felt like she didn’t belong in that world. But then she was in that world and it was sort of like this paradoxical thing,” Tran said.
“And I also, I think because of the way that I was raised and the way that I grew up, I very much saw myself and see myself as someone who was the Everyman, brought into a world that I didn’t think I belonged in.”
The box-office results for Tran’s franchise debut “The Last Jedi” were massive, with the film grossing more than $1.3 billion worldwide. But director Rian Johnson’s film was also met with a divided, at-times contentious response from viewers, and by that summer Tran had deleted all of her Instagram posts following months of online harassment.
Since Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy and director J.J. Abrams re-launched the franchise under Disney’s ownership with “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” in 2015, the series has grown in terms of representation.
Asked why she believes that’s important, Tran said she wishes that was a question she didn’t have to answer.
“I wish that we were so equally represented across socioeconomic class, across race, gender, abilities, religions, everything. I wish we were so equally represented that we didn’t have to address this,” she said. “Like, that would be a wonderful world, but at the same time we’re not there yet so we do have to sort of talk about this.”