Fans of Kelly Marie Tran’s Rose Tico were upset by the lack of her inclusion in ‘Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker‘ and now co-writer Chris Terrio is setting the record straight on why her scenes were cut. It turns out, Terrio and J.J. Abrams had written in quite an extensive set of scenes for Tran that would have had her character Tico interact with the late Carrie Fisher‘s General Leia. Unfortunately, the scenes they were using with her and Leia just weren’t able to be created to the level of realism that they wanted and had to be cut.
In a recent interview with Awards Daily, Terrio explained:
“Well, first of all, J.J. and I adore Kelly Marie Tran. One of the reasons that Rose has fewer scenes than we would liked her to have has to do with the difficulty of using Carrie [Fisher]’s footage in the way we wanted to. We wanted Rose to be the anchor at the rebel base who was with Leia. We thought we couldn’t leave Leia at the base without any of the principals who 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 last thing we were doing was deliberately trying to sideline Rose. We adore the character, and we adore Kelly – so much so that we anchored her with our favorite person in this galaxy, General Leia.”
Unfortunately, any scenes that would have included Fisher didn’t have the luxury of being re-shot and were all painfully recreated with unused footage from ‘Star Wars: The Force Awakens.’
Sadly, this is character grown to be a possible future leader of the Resistance which we’ll never be able to see play out on the big screen. It may be included in the novelization, but fans who only watch the films won’t be able to see her expand her role in a galaxy far, far away.
Are you annoyed that Rose Tico didn’t get more screen time in ‘Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker’? Share your thoughts in the comments below!
