'Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker' Writer Explains Why Kelly Marie Tran's Rose Tico Was Barely in Film

A major showrunner from Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker has finally spoken out about why Kelly Marie Tran's character, Rose Tico, was only given 76 seconds of screen time in the film, sparking the hashtag campaign #RoseTicoDeservedBetter. And though it seems like a valid explanation, it probably won’t be enough to console Tran’s fans.

People reports that Chris Terrio, who co-wrote the blockbuster with director J.J. Abrams, was asked by Awards Daily why Rose was sidelined for so much of the action. He explained that the beloved character had to stay back at the base because of the technical difficulties with using the late Carrie Fisher’s unused scenes from The Force Awakens to recreate her in the new film. Terrio stated:

“One of the reasons that Rose has a few less scenes than we would like 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.”

Terrio continued, “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.”

Though it was no doubt difficult to work only with unused footage to bring a character to life, since the film was being edited on set, it does seem like Rose could've gotten a few more lines once they figured out they couldn’t succeed with the photorealism.