Here's Why Kelly Marie Tran's 'Rise of Skywalker' Role Was Reduced

Kelly Marie Tran‘s screentime in Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker is a mere 76 seconds out of the movie’s 2 hours and 35 minutes- and now a writer is speaking out about why.

Chris Terrio, who co-wrote the film, opened up about the character of Rose Tico’s reduced role in the film.

“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,” Chris shared with Awards Daily.

“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.”

He went on to explain the situation: “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.”

READ MORE: Kelly Marie Tran’s Screen Time in ‘Rise of Skywalker’ Was Timed & It’s Quite Shocking