Kelly Marie Tran Speaks Out on Her Star Wars Discrimination: “Stop Scapegoating People of Color”

Kelly Marie Tran is finally in a good place in her career. She’s proud of who she is and the roles she’s taking on. But just a few years ago, things were very different.

When Tran joined the Star Wars universe in 2017 as Rose Tico in The Last Jedi, she faced terrible backlash. Some fans reacted with racism and sexism, sending hateful messages and attacking her online. Now, Tran is speaking up about how that time affected her.

“I was persecuted,” Tran said, describing how deeply the hate hurt. She believes it wasn’t just about her character, but about something much bigger. “It’s interesting how it seems to be happening pretty consistently to actors of color who find themselves in these spaces,” she said.

Tran thinks her experience reflects what’s going on in society today. “These occurrences are a microcosm for the social climate that we’re living in. And it’s really unfortunate,” she explained.

She added that people often blame people of color or queer people for problems, instead of looking at the real cause. “We live in a world where those identities have been weaponized so that people are not able to see the bigger picture. I really just want people to recognize, it’s the system that’s the problem. Stop scapegoating people of color or queer people or anyone who’s different.”

Despite the pain, Tran has grown stronger. She’s now working on projects that mean something to her. “This past year, I did four movies, and they were all Asian stories with Asian writer-directors, and a few of those were also queer writer-directors,” she said.

Tran is proud of the change in her life. “I’ve been able to learn how to celebrate the parts of myself that, at the time, I was scared of, or I was made to feel like I had to be ashamed of,” she told Variety.

One of her new films, The Wedding Banquet, helped her embrace her identity even more. The project, which tells a queer Asian love story, was filled with joy and community. “The entire experience was about celebrating queerness and celebrating chosen family and celebrating queer joy, which I didn’t know I needed so badly at that point in my life,” Tran said.

Looking back at her Star Wars experience, she knows there’s still a long way to go for actors of color in big franchises. But she hopes audiences will start to grow, too.

“The hope is that people who are not afforded the ability, maybe, to have access to these communities of queer people or people of color, are able to see through the art that people of color and queer people are also human, and they have hopes and dreams,” she said.

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