Kelly Marie Tran on beating the Star Wars trolls and Asian pride for Raya and the Last Dragon

Star Wars actor Kelly Marie Tran reveals how she embraced her Asian heritage for Disney’s trailblazing Raya and the Last Dragon.

Just like the title character she voices in Disney’s new animated, action-adventure movie, Raya and the Last Dragon, Kelly Marie Tran is very well versed in overcoming adversity.

The American actor, born Tran Loan as the daughter of Vietnamese refugees, got her big break in 2015 when she was cast as Rose Tico in Star Wars: The Last Jedi. While many applauded the hugely successful sci-fi franchise for casting its first Asian-American woman in a lead role, when the controversial film was released two years later, Tran became the subject of vile and vicious trolling, criticising her gender, ethnicity and weight.

Tran was devastated by the venom and vitriol, deleting all her Instagram posts and pursuing therapy, but was eventually inspired to write an essay for The New York Times about her experiences of being marginalised growing up as an Asian-American. Now, with the benefit of a few years of hindsight, she says she’s proud of the way she emerged stronger from the experience and returned to the film world. While she says she didn’t contemplate quitting acting entirely, she was deeply shaken, and the profession she loved dearly definitely became “scarier”.

Kelly Marie Tran voices the feisty warrior princess Raya in Disney’s new action adventure Raya and the Last Dragon.

“If you have something happen to you, you can react in one of two ways,” she says over Zoom call from her Los Angeles home. “One is that you can shut yourself off to the world and the other one is that you can process it and figure out how to continue to find good in the world despite having that thing happen to you. That’s strangely metaphorical because it’s also what Raya is learning how to do. I am really proud that I was able to give myself time to process those feelings and to put myself out there again.”

In her essay for the New York Times, Tran revealed she stopped speaking Vietnamese at the age of nine because she was tired of being mocked and spoke of a sense of otherness that led to self-hate. While she has now moved past those negative feelings and embraced her heritage – her pride at being the first Southeast Asian Disney princess is palpable – she says that some of the scars still linger.

“I don’t think that having a good thing happen to you can really erase painful experiences that have happened to you,” she says. “They are two different things. That being said, it feels really cool to have experienced those things and to now be a part of something that hopefully changes that experiences for future generations. That feels like the right thing.”

Kelly Marie Tran, pictured with John Boyega, says the trolling she got after The Last Jedi was released made acting “scarier” for her.

Tran’s character in Raya and the Last Dragon is a warrior princess, who is trying to reunite a mythical, Southeast Asian country to battle a horde of monsters threatening to destroy the land and humanity. She’s part of a predominantly Asian voice cast that also includes rapper-actor Awkwafina as the dragon Sisu, as well as Gemma Chan, Sandra Oh, Daniel Dae Kim and Benedict Wong. Tran says she had looked up to many of her castmates for years as trailblazers within an industry that has traditionally featured few Asian faces.

“It’s so empowering to be part of that team,” she says. “Because I remember not seeing myself on a screen and I remember how impossible it felt for me to pursue a career in this world, recognising that there aren’t many – if any – people that looked like me. So, to be part of that positive change feels really, really good.”

Tran says the release of Raya and the Last Dragon is also timely in a way that its creators couldn’t possibly have predicted when production began nearly three years ago. Not only does it speak to the coronavirus era in its message of coming together to defeat a common, faceless foe, it also arrives at a time where anti-Asian sentiment has been on the rise in America and other parts of the world.

Awkwafina (Sisu) and Kelly Marie Tran are part of a predominantly Asian voice cast in Maya and the Last Dragon.

“I think especially now because of that experience – and also the current state of attacks on people of Asian descent – (it meant a lot) being able to be part of something that is celebrating Asian culture and hopefully it’s a moment of pride for our community.

“Because feeling joy and celebrating where you are from I think can be an act of rebellion in a world that is telling you that you should feel like you don’t belong.”

The pandemic also had a practical effect for the making of Raya and the Last Dragon. Whereas the voice cast would normally have convened in a fancy recording studio with the filmmakers, COVID-19 shutdowns meant they had to improvise using a more, low-tech DIY solution.

“It was hard,” Tran admits. “My boyfriend and I created this makeshift fort out of sound blankets taped to a wall and different furniture that we put into a square and then we recorded like this, on Zoom.”

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Another positive for Tran has come from the Disney marketing machine that has swung in to action to promote the film, with a swath of merchandise hitting the shelves, including her very own Raya doll. Even though she went through the same thing after the release of The Last Jedi, Tran admits she still struggles to get her head around being immortalised in toy form.

“I took a picture back in 2017 of me with all of the Rose merchandise and then I took the same exact picture and tried to make it look the same with all of the Raya merchandise,” she says with a laugh. “It’s pretty wild – it feels like a pretty miraculous, magical thing that doesn’t really make sense in my mind.”

Raya and the Last Dragon is in cinemas from Thursday.