After landing the role of Rose Tico through a secret auditioning process and debuting as the character in Star Wars: The Last Jedi, Kelly Marie Tran left social media. In the past, she’s described her exit from social media as being like a bad breakup. In a new interview with Teen Vogue, she explained why she decided to step away from the internet after being harassed by The Last Jedi‘s critics. “We’re living in a world where we’re all constantly being bombarded all of the time with so much stimulus, and I don’t know that we are all conscious of the ways in which it affects us,” Tran says. “For me, I knew that the most important thing was to protect my mental health, and make myself a space where I felt like I could create again and where I could be an artist again, which for a time, I didn’t know if I could do that again.”
Videos by ComicBook.com
She continued, “That being said, I don’t think leaving social media is the answer for everyone, I think it was the answer for me in the moment. I recognize my own privilege and understand that there are some people who have to be on social media for their work and their positions, and… the thing about it that makes me really upset is just what you were saying in the beginning of us initially speaking, where it’s like, why are we as artists, or as writers, or as creators in the spaces on social media, why are we the ones that have to normalize receiving harassment? That should not be okay.”
Tran wasn’t the only star who departed social media after appearing in the Star Wars sequel trilogy. Daisy Ridley, who played Rey, also vacated her social media accounts.
“I think everybody tried to mold that into something else. It really wasn’t a story,” Ridley during an appearance on DragCast. “I was asked to go on it, and, at the time, I was like, ‘Okay,’ and then it got to the point where I didn’t want to be on it and I was at my friend’s house in L.A., and I remember being like, ‘Oh, I don’t want to be on Instagram,’ and they were like, ‘Well, why don’t you come off?’ and I was like, ‘Oh.’ And it was really a nice, autonomous decision. Because I was like, ‘Oh, I don’t actually have to be on it. This is nice.’ And I always had a limit to what I shared anyway and, honestly, my life isn’t that exciting. So there were a lot of separate things.”
Earlier this year, Ridley confirmed she has no plans to return to social media. “I have managed to separate my personal life well from my professional life, partly probably because I’m not on social media,” Ridley told the Spanish magazine S Moda. “The statistics that link them (social media sites) to anxiety are terrifying. I have friends completely addicted to their phone who have suffered with this problem.”
The Star Wars sequel trilogy is streaming now on Disney+. Tran voices the lead character in Raya and the Last Dragon, which comes to Disney+ beginning June 4th.
