Kelly Marie Tran

Her early credits consisted of primarily CollegeHumor videos and small TV roles.[9][12] She landed a commercial agent in 2011, who got Tran to take improv classes at the Upright Citizens Brigade. At The Second City, Tran is part of the all-female, Asian-American improv group, Number One Son.[9][13]

In 2013, she starred in the web-series Ladies Like Us.[11] In 2015, Tran was working as an assistant at a creative recruiting firm in Century City.[9]

In 2015, Tran was cast as Rose Tico in Star Wars: The Last Jedi. Rose Tico is a rebel mechanic who joins up with main character Finn after the sacrifice of her oldest sister, Paige Tico (Veronica Ngo), a gunner trained by Resistance commander Poe Dameron.[14] When she went to film her scenes at Pinewood Studios in early 2016, she said she was filming a small movie in Canada.[15] With her role in The Last Jedi, Tran became the first Asian-American woman to play a main role in a Star Wars film.[12] In 2017, she also became the first Asian woman to appear on the cover of Vanity Fair when she appeared on the cover of the summer 2017 issue with actor John Boyega (who played Finn), and Oscar Isaac (who played X-Wing fighter pilot Poe Dameron).[16]

Tran plays the lead role of Kaitlin Le in Radiotopia's mystery thriller podcast, Passenger List.[17] She was a series regular on the Facebook Watch series Sorry for Your Loss.[18]

Tran will play Val Little in the upcoming Disney+ series Monsters at Work. She has also been cast as Dawn in the film The Croods: A New Age, replacing Kat Dennings.[19][20] She was also cast as Raya in the upcoming Walt Disney Animation Studios in-house animated production[21] Raya and the Last Dragon replacing Cassie Steele.[22]

Despite the critical and commercial success of Star Wars: The Last Jedi (2017), Tran became the subject of racist and sexist attacks over the Internet,[23][24][25][26] including insults about her ethnicity and weight,[27] which began immediately after her casting was announced.[28][29] In a March 2018 interview, Tran said she had been receiving "really acidic, misogynistic, racist comments" regarding her role as Rose Tico.[29][30] Tran was the target of racist trolling on Twitter; in one example, right-wing Internet personality Paul Ray Ramsey mocked her weight.[25][31][32] In December 2017, Rose Tico's entry on Wookieepedia, an online encyclopedia about the Star Wars universe, was edited to include racist and vulgar comments, which drew national media attention. Fandom, the wiki hosting service that operated the domain, removed the offensive edits, protected the page, and publicly condemned the vandalism.[24][25][31] The character of Rose Tico was defended by the official Star Wars page on Facebook.[33]

In June 2018, Tran deleted all of her Instagram posts in response to online harassment,[23][34][35] and replaced the account bio with, "Afraid, but doing it anyway."[27][36][37] She also sought therapy following the harassment.[38] Salon writer Nicole Karlis suggested many of the discriminatory attacks came from "white privileged men" afraid of a strong female character who is not hypersexualized in a film, writing: "I can't help but wonder: if Tran's character aligned with the misogynistic and racist stereotype of Asian women as submissive and seductive, would the trolls have still come out?"[25] Esquire writer Dom Nero called the bullying of Tran "another example of the rising current of hatred and discrimination in our culture", and said it came from a "very vocal minority of Star Wars fans who do not agree with the progressive ideals set forth in the refreshingly inclusive, emotionally-nuanced film."[39]

Several cast and crew members of The Last Jedi condemned the attacks and spoke out in defense of Tran, including writer-director Rian Johnson and actors John Boyega,[40][41][42] Domhnall Gleeson,[43][44] and Mark Hamill,[37][45] the last of whom tweeted a picture of himself with Tran and wrote the caption, "What's not to love? #GetALifeNerds".[36][37][46] Johnson branded the attackers as "manbabies",[27][30][43] and said they represent a "few unhealthy people" and not the "vast majority" of Star Wars fans.[36][37][46] Claudia Gray, an author who has written several Star Wars books, said the attacks against Tran ran counter to the principles of the franchise, and people who did not understand that "were never a Star Wars fan to begin with".[30] Other celebrities expressed support for Tran as well, including Josh Gad, Kumail Nanjiani, Gabrielle Union, Elijah Wood, and Edgar Wright.[36] Stephen Colbert condemned Tran's attackers during a segment on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, during which he presented a mock trailer for The Last Jedi specifically designed to make "racist, misogynist nerds" angry.[42] In less than one day, more than 20,000 fans retweeted a message of support for Tran from a fan on Twitter that sought to "drown out the manbabies".[30] Star Wars fans began circulating fan art of Rose Tico on Twitter to show support for Tran,[46][47] along with the hashtag #FanArtForRose.[47] She was also shown support at the 2018 San Diego Comic-Con during a "Rally for Rose", during which fans appeared in cosplay attire as Rose Tico or wore "Rose for Hope" T-shirts. Fans posted about the event on social media using the hashtags #ForceOutHate and #RallyForRose.[45][48]

After a prolonged stretch of silence about her harassment, Tran wrote an essay on the subject for The New York Times entitled "Kelly Marie Tran: I Won't Be Marginalized by Online Harassment", which ran on August 21, 2018.[23][1] She wrote that the attacks reinforced microaggressions she had long faced as a Vietnamese American, and which sought to reinforce a narrative that Asians should be marginalized and treated only as minor characters, both in stories and in real life.[23][40][1] Tran stated she even began to believe the negative remarks made about her, and that they had sent her "down a spiral of self-hate, into the darkest recesses of my mind, places where I tore myself apart, where I put their words above my own self-worth."[35][49] She wrote: "Their words reinforced a narrative I had heard my whole life: that I was 'other', that I didn't belong, that I wasn't good enough, simply because I wasn't like them. And that feeling, I realize now, was, and is, shame, a shame for the things that made me different, a shame for the culture from which I came from."[23][1] She concluded with: "You might know me as Kelly. I am the first woman of color to have a leading role in a Star Wars movie. I am the first Asian woman to appear on the cover of Vanity Fair. My real name is Loan. And I am just getting started."[23][1] Tran later said the essay was difficult to write, but also "probably one of the proudest moments of [her] career thus far."[50]