In a recent interview, Oscar-winning screenwriter Chris Terrio explained why Rose Tico (portrayed by Kelly Marie Tran) had so little screen time in The Rise of Skywalker when she had a lead role in The Last Jedi.
“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’s footage in the way we wanted to,” says Terrio. “We wanted Rose to be the anchor at the rebel base who was with Leia.”
He added, “We thought we couldn’t leave Leia at the base without any of the principals whom 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”.
The writer also explained, “the last thing (they) were doing was deliberately trying to sideline Rose.”
In a second interview, Terrio clarified that he was not putting the blame on the VFX team at ILM when he stated the previous comments.”I badly misspoke if in an earlier statement I implied that any cut scenes between Rose and Leia were the fault of our VFX team at ILM… ILM performed actual miracles at every stage of the creative process in Episode IX.”
Kelly Marie Tran’s total screen time in The Rise of Skywalker is 1 minute and 16 seconds and some fans are not satisfied with this explanation.
On Twitter, #RoseTicoDeservedBetter is trending in support of the young actress, who has not reacted yet to the criticism against her lack of on-screen presence. This surely contrasts with 2018’s events when Kelly Marie Tran had to delete her Instagram posts after facing sexist and racist comments.
Also read: EXCLUSIVE: Luke Skywalker To Appear in Obi-Wan Show
Fortunately enough, it seems like the star could be given the opportunity to be reunited with her character once again thanks to Crazy Rich Asians’ director John M. Chu. On Twitter, Chu expressed his desire to direct a stand-alone Rose Tico TV show for Disney+.
