Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker Co-Writer Reveals Why Rose Had Fewer Scenes

One of the notable elements cut down in Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker was the amount of scenes for Kelly Marie Tran’s Rose, and co-writer Chris Terrio has weighed in on why. Terrio, who co-wrote the film with J.J. Abrams, spoke with Awards Daily about the film and was asked why Tran, who was a major part of The Last Jedi (and the target of rampant social media abuse because of it), had a diminished role in the film.

According to Terrio, the reduction of Tran’s role had less to to with her character and more to do with the fact she was supposed to have scenes with Carrie Fisher, who was being used in the film via unusued footage shot for The Force Awakens due to the fact that she died before The Rise of Skywalker had begun shooting. Terrio said:

“Well, first of all, J.J. and I adore Kelly Marie Tran. 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’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. 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.

Terrio was also asked if there was talk about, since the final film was so plot and exposition heavy, splitting the film into two portions. “I wish we could have done that,” he replied. “There is a lot of plot in the movie, and as a writer, you always want scenes to let the plot breathe more. If there were a way of doing it, splitting it would have been my dream. We could have written these characters forever. There was so much backstory that had to be left by the wayside. I wish that we could have that, but George always said it was nine movies. That was the natural size of the saga, and so, other than a few initial discussions, we never really advanced that conversation. Of course, as a writer, it breaks your heart to leave stuff on the table that you think would have given the story more depth and nuance and to give the characters more to do. Speaking for myself and not on the part of the studio, I do wish there could have been a ‘Part 1’ and a ‘Part 2.'”

Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker is now in theaters.