For whatever reason, Kelly Marie Tran‘s Rose Tico turned out to be one of the most polarizing characters across the Star Wars Sequel Trilogy. After being given a prominent role in The Last Jedi, the actress faced a huge volume of vitriol and backlash online despite doing nothing more than reading the lines on the script she was given, and things got so bad she left social media altogether.
Several of her co-stars publicly blasted the so-called ‘fans’ for throwing such negativity in the direction of a young woman who’d just scored the biggest role of her career, although Tran had just as many supporters as she did detractors. Rose’s screentime in The Rise of Skywalker was minimal at best, despite the fact she was featured prominently in several of the trailer’s money shots, but Tran has since revealed she doesn’t have any regrets.
If anything, she’s going from strength to strength having lent her vocal talents to animated hits The Croods: A New Age and Raya and the Last Dragon, which saw her introduced to acclaimed independent filmmaker Carlos López Estrada, who broke out with the acclaimed Blindspotting before working on Disney projects Frozen II, Raya and Encanto.
Tran recently boarded Estrada’s latest live-action effort Summertime as an executive producer, and in a new interview he jumped right in and answered the question on Tran’s behalf when she was asked if joining the Marvel Cinematic Universe was something that would interest her int he future.
“I’m going to answer for her and say I hope she’s part of it! For me, as a director, I have been very inspired by all the movies and people I’ve gotten a chance to work with, including the Summertime poets and Kelly. I will do everything within my power to continue working on projects that I can be equally as inspired by whether it’s Summertime 2: The Return of Summertime or a Marvel thing, I think I’m just going to have to follow my gut and try to surround myself with people I find as inspiring as Kelly Marie Tran.”
Obviously, not many rising or established talents have turned down the advances of Kevin Feige’s all-conquering outfit, but having done plenty of work for Disney in the past, Kelly Marie Tran is well-placed to join another of the Mouse House’s biggest brands one day.
