A “Star Wars” actress who deleted her Instagram posts this summer because of online harassment is opening up about the issue for the first time. Kelly Marie Tran, who appeared in “Star Wars: The Last Jedi,” wrote an essay on the subject, published today by The New York Times.
“Their words seemed to confirm what growing up as a woman and a person of color already taught me: that I belonged in margins and spaces, valid only as a minor character in their lives and stories,” Tran wrote. “And those words awakened something deep inside me — a feeling I thought I had grown out of. The same feeling I had when at 9, I stopped speaking Vietnamese altogether because I was tired of hearing other kids mock me. Or at 17, when at dinner with my white boyfriend and his family, I ordered a meal in perfect English, to the surprise of the waitress, who exclaimed, “Wow, it’s so cute that you have an exchange student!’”
Tran added: “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. And to me, the most disappointing thing was that I felt it at all.”
We encourage readers to click on the link above to The New York Times to read the full piece by Tran.
For me, and many others…I don’t think the hatred for her character was really about race. I just thought she was a horrible character that took away from the story. Nothing to do with the actress. I’m sure she’s fine. I blame the writers. The only race part of this (again for me) is that it seemed like the producers said “We need to fit an Asian character in there somewhere. We don’t care if it makes sense…just do it…we need to be PC.” And that’s probably why the character seems forced, and has nothing to do with the Star Wars story. But I’m sure there are other online bullies out there that were making it all about race…and attacking the actress. That is bad, and I don’t agree with those people at all.
I don’t know about you, but when people post hateful stuff about the *actress* and personal attacks, then they’re attacking her, not the character she played or the writers.
It might be better if more people were able to draw the distinction between performers and the roles that they play.