Kelly Marie Tran likens her Star Wars experience to a “horrible breakup”

Kelly Marie Tran famously endured a lot of backlash after the release of Star Wars: The Last Jedi. She talks through how she found her equilibrium again.

Most Star Wars fans got to know Kelly Marie Tran when she made her debut as Rose Tico in Rian Johnson’s The Last Jedi, the first woman of color to play a lead in a Star Wars movie. Known to be outgoing and gregarious on set and having come from humble roots, Tran quickly gained a following, but she also had a lot of people sniping at her in the wake of the movie’s release, The Last Jedi having famously divided the fandom.

But Tran got an especial amount of backlash, much of it racist and misogynist. Tran, like Daisy Ridley before her, ended up quitting social media over the abuse, and helped ignite a conversation about the more toxic part of fandom communities. Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter, Tran said the whole experience was like she “fell in love very publicly and then very publicly had an embarrassingly horrible breakup.”

"What’s interesting to me about working in this industry is that certain things become so public, even if you don’t really mean them to be, [like] the succession of events in which I left the internet for my own sanity. It was basically me being like, ‘Oh, this isn’t good for my mental health. I’m obviously going to leave this.’"

Tran ended up laying low for a while, turning down jobs until she remained some equilibrium. “It felt like I was just hearing the voice of my agents and my publicity team and all of these people telling me what to say and what to do and how to feel,” she recalled. “I realized, I didn’t know how I felt anymore. And I didn’t remember why I was in this in the first place.”

"Any time that happens, I have to close up shop and go away for a while and really interact in the real world — read books and journal and go on hikes and look at a tree and remind myself that there was a fire that burned inside of me before Star Wars, before any of this. And I needed to find that again."

And she did. She leaned on close friends she’d had before she got famous and went to therapy, where she learned that “if someone doesn’t understand me or my experience, it shouldn’t be my place to have to internalize their misogyny or racism or all of the above. Maybe they just don’t have the imagination to understand that there are different types of people living in the world.”

Now, Tran is starring as the title character in Raya and the Last Dragon, where she’s playing the first southeast Asian Disney princess, another first. She recognizes the importance of that, but with her Last Jedi experience under her belt, also knows the value of unplugging and taking care of herself. “I acknowledge and validate the label of these things being historic, and I’m so grateful to be part of them, but for my own sanity I have to not think about that too much.”

Raya and the Last Dragon is available on Disney+ today!

To stay up to date on everything fantasy, science fiction, and WiC, follow our all-encompassing Facebook page and sign up for our exclusive newsletter.

Get HBO, Starz, Showtime and MORE for FREE with a no-risk, 7-day free trial of Amazon Channels