In the summer of 2016, Pokemon Go debuted and became a huge craze to everyone who owned a mobile device, even if they were in the middle of shooting the next installment in the Star Wars saga. As a guest on The Star Wars Show, actress Kelly Marie Tran revealed she managed to prank The Last Jedi writer/director Rian Johnson by toying with his desires to catch rare Pokemon.
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“At the end of shooting, I think there were only a couple weeks left, and this is just when Pokemon Go was brand new and we were all playing it,” Tran shared. “One day, I told Rian that there was a Pikachu outside of set. So we were like, inside, about to shoot, and he said, ‘Are you serious?’ And I said, ‘Yeah, just got a Pikachu, it’s right outside.’ And John Boyega said, ‘Oh yeah, I saw it. I saw it.’”
Johnson couldn’t resist the opportunity to collect the rare creature, only for him to walk right into a trap Tran had set.
“And he goes outside and I had drawn in chalk a Pikachu on the sidewalk,” Tran admitted. “And that was one of my proudest moments.”
Given the way in which Tran learned she had been cast in The Last Jedi, this prank seemed like payback towards Johnson.
“The day I found out, Rian [Johnson, director of The Last Jedi] was like, ‘Oh we want you in this movie,’ I had just left work on my lunch break to go to this meeting,” Tran told Entertainment Weekly. “Afterward, he told me that I couldn’t tell anyone, so I went back to work and answered phones and answered emails, like nothing happened. It was the most bizarre experience. Inside I was like, Ugh! Crazy!”
Despite the inherent adjustments to becoming an incredibly recognizable face, Tran says her life hasn’t drastically changed from what it was before she joined the saga.
“I still just sort of live my life the way that I was before,” she says. “I don’t know when I will feel that it’s different. Definitely, when I saw the action figures, I was like, ‘This is insane,’ but it still hasn’t sunk in or registered on me.”
You can see Tran as Rose Tico when The Last Jedi hits theaters on December 15.
[H/T YouTube, Star Wars]
