HOME / ENTERTAINMENT / TV

'Star Wars' writer explains why Kelly Marie Tran's role was reduced in 'The Rise of Skywalker'

Chris Terrio, who co-wrote the film, says Tran's scenes with Carrie Fisher were cut due to the CGI teams being unable to make their scenes work realistically

'Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker' was subject to many criticisms, but one of the biggest was the reducted role of Rose Tico (Kelly Marie Tran) in the film. Talking to Awards Daily, Chris Terrio explained why her scenes needed to be cut.

Terrio, who co-wrote the film with director JJ Abrams, said the pair "adore" Tran. He also said that Rose Tico originally played a bigger role within the film. She was meant to have more scenes with Leia Organa (Carrie Fisher) at the Rebel base, using archival footage of the departed Fisher along with CGI to make the scenes work. The team apparently ran into trouble while making the CGI believable well in time for the movie's release.

“One of the reasons that Rose has a few less scenes than we would like her to have has to do with the difficulty of using Carrie Fisher’s footage in the way we wanted to,” Terrio said.

“We wanted Rose to be the anchor at the rebel base who was with Leia. We thought we couldn’t leave Leia at the base without any of the principals who we love, so Leia and Rose were working together… As the process evolved, a few scenes we’d written with Rose and Leia turned out to not meet the standard of photorealism that we’d hoped for. Those scenes, unfortunately, fell out of the film.”

Terrio also said, "The last thing we were doing was deliberately trying to sideline Rose. We adore the character, and we adore Kelly – so much so that we anchored her with our favorite person in this galaxy, General Leia."

Introduced in 'Star Wars: The Last Jedi', Rose played a significant role in the events of the movie, and was the first Asian person to play a main role in a 'Star Wars' film.

'The Last Jedi' received anger-fueled backlash from 'Star Wars' fans online, with many trashing the film to this day. A loud and toxic part of the online fandom harassed Tran on Twitter to the point she left social media to avoid the harassment. Many fans now believe her reduced role on 'The Rise of Skywalker' was JJ Abrams caving in to fan vitriol. 

'Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker' is in cinemas now.