Kelly Marie Tran Never Saw a Star Wars Movie Before Cast in ‘The Last Jedi’

It’s impossible to dispute the impact the Star Wars franchise has had on the current culture. Spanning eight different films across multiple generations, with many other contributions across multimedia, many are shocked to find out a person hasn’t seen one of the movies.

Well, meet Kelly Marie Tran, one of the new actors in Star Wars: The Last Jedi, and someone who never saw any of the films until she was cast as Rose Tico in the film.

“In 10th grade, my teacher was obsessed with [Star Wars] and played it in the background, but I was reading Harry Potter so I wasn’t listening to it,” said Tran in an interview with BuzzFeed.

When she started auditioning for the movie that would become The Last Jedi, she still didn’t go back and watch the movies.

“I didn’t have this expectation of what I thought this person should be like; I wasn’t trying to model her after someone I’d seen in a movie,” Tran said.

After five different auditions, she finally landed the part. And Tran gives credit to the fact that she had never seen any of the Star Wars trilogies beforehand.

“And this is why, I’m telling you, the fact that I hadn’t grown up with Star Wars really helped me. I think I would have fallen over.”

Rose is set to play a major part in the new film, joining Finn (John Boyega) on a mission to infiltrate the First Order. As a Resistance mechanic and sibling of an ace fighter pilot, Rose is searching for her place in the galaxy and considers Finn a hero. But of course, Finn doesn’t consider himself as such in the slightest, which should make for an interesting dynamic.

Their journey will find them on the new casino world of Canto Bight, and bring them into contact with the mysterious DJ (Benicio del Toro) who figures to play a crucial role in their undercover mission.

After landing the gig, the actor returned home for the holidays and suggested to her family that they go see Star Wars: The Force Awakens, which just premiered in theaters. But her father refused.

“He goes, ‘Ughhh, I hate movies like that. I don’t know why people go see sci-fi movies.’ And I was like, ‘Welp.’”

In a funny turn of events, Tran’s father will probably be among the first in line to see Star Wars: The Last Jedi when it premieres in theaters on December 15.