Rose Marie Tran On the Difficulty of Shooting Leia’s Scenes In Star Wars: the Rise of Skywalker

In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Kelly Marie Tran spoke about the difficulty of shooting scenes with Leia in Star Wars: the Rise of Skywalker, as they had to film around old footage of her due to Carrie Fisher’s passing. Here are highlights:

On cut footage from the film: “It’s one thing to sit there, look at that footage and try to react to it, but a lot of the big group scenes felt like they were puzzle pieces if that makes sense. I think there were more reshoots on those scenes, specifically, to just try and make sure all of the performances matched up since she [Carrie Fisher] wasn’t physically there. It was insane to be running across this platform — which I know you only see for a second in the movie — but we shot it so many times. I remember having bruises on my knees the next day because we kept running, and then we would fall onto our knees and do some more shooting stuff. I don’t think that’s in the movie.”

On if she made backstory for Rose during the year between films: “I definitely did. I also did that for moments in The Last Jedi where I felt that there were things I wanted to have in my arsenal — both as an actor and in terms of knowledge of my character. But, last time, during Jedi, I had all this backstory, and I later read one of the novels that was based on my character. So, I quickly realized I was completely wrong. So, the answer is yes: I do have a lot of backstory that I made up in between, but I’m pretty sure it’s not canon. (Laughs.)”

On the atmosphere of the set: “I remember us still being normal humans and kind of joking around about little things. But, we were always still remembering what we were doing. I think that day, for me, was very, very specific, and I won’t forget the feeling of being aware of what we were doing. I think we all knew how many people loved this character and what this moment meant to them. So, we just wanted to honor and respect Leia, but also Carrie.”