Kelly Marie Tran opened up about her experience of coming out as “a queer person” after facing intense backlash from Star Wars fans.
“I was already being ridiculed. There were comments about my race or comments about me being a woman [from Star Wars fans]. I already felt like I was being persecuted for those things,” Tran, 36, told Entertainment Weekly in an interview published Thursday, April 17.
The actress was thrust into international fame overnight when she was cast as Rose Tico in 2017’s Star Wars: The Last Jedi. Before anyone had even seen Tran’s performance as Rose, she became the target of complaints from a subset of Star Wars fans who opposed efforts to diversify the franchise. John Boyega and Jodie Turner-Smith have both spoken out about enduring similar mistreatment from the Star Wars fandom.
Tran related the scrutiny of her Star Wars casting to her decision to come out as queer, telling EW, “[After the backlash], I’m like, ‘Am I going to publicly come out?’ It was a complicated thing to think about.”
“But I’m going to quote [The Wedding Banquet costar] Lily Gladstone here, someone who I love dearly and I’ve learned so much from,” she added. “She says that, ‘Joy is an act of resistance.’ And I think that is really true. When I see other people experiencing joy despite their communities being persecuted, it’s such a beautiful, brave, inspiring thing to witness. I don’t think that I could have done that without the support of my amazing cast and crew and friends.”
Tran also spoke to Us Weekly exclusively about the circumstances that led to her coming out while shooting her new movie, The Wedding Banquet, which revolves around a gay man proposing a “green card wedding” to a female friend in exchange for paying for her IVF treatments.
“I did not plan to do it at all,” she told Us. “I was on set that day. We were filming the Korean wedding scene, and this journalist from Vanity Fair, David Canfield, who we love and adore, came and did this first look. And he asked me what I was excited about, and the first thing that came out of my mouth was, ‘I’m excited to tell a queer story as a queer person.’ And then I was like, ‘Uh-oh, oh, wait, let me think about it.’”
Tran praised the reporter for being “kind” and consulting with her about the way she wanted to share her queer identity with the world.
“That was such a gift,” she told Us. “I knew that that’s not normal, and so I’m so grateful to David Canfield. But yeah, I thought about it and I also had the experience of making this movie with all of my friends who were celebrating this part of our identity. And I was like, ‘Why would I hide this?’”
The star continued, “So I’m really, really grateful to be celebrating that now here in a time when it’s become a really complicated time for the queer community. So to be able to have this thing that we get to celebrate means the world to me.”
Fire Island filmmaker Andrew Ahn remade legendary director Ang Lee’s 1993 comedy for a modern audience with help from an acclaimed cast, including Tran, Gladstone, Saturday Night Live’s Bowen Yang and Twin Peaks icon Joan Chen.
“I’m going to be honest, I don’t remember how old I was exactly when I saw the original [Wedding Banquet film], but I did do a rewatch of it recently, right before Sundance,” Tran told Us. “And I was just in awe at how beautiful that film is and how well it holds up.”
Tran went on to say, “I also had the joy of working on this reimagining of it and recognizing all these little references that Andrew and [cowriter] James [Schamus] put into our version that are from the original film. So it’s just really exciting to not only be such a fan of Ang Lee and his work, but also to be now in this little reimagining.”
The Wedding Banquet hits theaters Friday, April 18.
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