What It Would Take For Kelly Marie Tran To Play Rose Tico Again
Actors get asked if they will reprise their biggest roles all the time. For Kelly Marie Tran that means Rose Tico, one of the stars of Star Wars: Episode VIII – The Last Jedi. The film had huge buzz around it leading up to its release — Mark Hamill was set to make his return to the franchise, Rian Johnson was directing, and with the passing of Carrie Fisher the movie was seen as incredibly important for fans of Fisher and Leia Organa everywhere.
Somehow, though, The Last Jedi became incredibly divisive. Certain corners of Star Wars fandom railed against the fate of Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill wasn't happy about his character's story, either), the Canto Bight sequence was generally panned, and Kelly Marie Tran faced the kind of Star Wars hatred generally reserved for Jar Jar Binks (Ahmed Best).
Ultimately, Tran left social media to avoid the overwhelming onslaught of fanboy rage (via Variety). J.J. Abrams returned to the franchise promising he'd find a way to wrap up the entire Skywalker saga with Episode IX, and went on record saying, "I was grateful to Rian Johnson for so many things that he did but the greatest for me was casting Kelly Marie."
Rose Tico had less than a minute-and-a-half-worth of screen time in The Rise of Skywalker, so naturally people want to know — would Kelly Marie Tran ever return to the world of Star Wars?
What it would take for a Rose Tico series on Disney+
In an interview with Collider, Tran was asked about director Jon M. Chu's interest in creating a Disney+ Rose Tico series. If Chu is interested and Disney is interested, would Tran come back? "He's so cool," says Tran of Chu. "I don't know. I honestly don't know. It's so strange. I had so much fun being in that world but I feel like the pieces would have to fall into a perfect little puzzle and everything would have to feel like it's the right time and the right moment and the right story, like with any other project. But I don't know."
Tran is hardly the only actor from the third trilogy of Skywalker films to be asked about a potential return. Daisy Ridley who played Rey said on Jimmy Kimmel Live that she had no plans to return to her role in Star Wars but that she wasn't against the idea forever (via Digital Spy). John Boyega was a lot more clear about his intentions — he will never return to play Finn. "Not into playing one role for too long. I have more to offer than that. That's all," Boyega wrote responding to fans critiquing his unwillingness to return.
So why is it that, despite her fellow performers' resistance to returning to Star Wars, Tran hasn't ruled it out entirely? "I think there are a lot of characters in that universe that we have yet to hear enough about," admits Tran. With less than a minute and a half worth of screen time in her (thus far) final appearance, it's hard not to agree.