Actor Mark Hamill has come forward in support of his Star Wars: The Last Jedi co-star Kelly Marie Tran who has finally addressed the main reason for deactivating her social media accounts back in June. The 29-year-old actress whose real name is Loan recently penned down an editorial for The New York Times in which she opened up about the online harassment she had to face after the release of Star Wars: The Last Jedi.
Hamill shared Tran’s editorial, adding, “I said it before & I’ll say it again: WHAT’S NOT TO LOVE? 😍 I love you, Loan… we don’t deserve you & you ARE just getting started.”
In her NY Times essay, Tran noted that her media accounts were bombarded with racist and sexist tweets due to dislike for her character, Rose, in the film. The actress was likely subjected to the most amount of abuse in the aftermath of the film as she was a newcomer. The toxicity around her forced her to finally delete all her social media accounts.
Tran also opened up about how she was marginalized for her Vietnamese-American heritage all throughout her life. Everything affected her to such an extent that she started believing each and every word she was reading online.
“It wasn’t their words, it’s that I started to believe them,” Tran wrote in her NY Times piece. “Their words seemed to confirm what growing up as a woman and a person of color already taught me: that I belonged in margins and spaces, valid only as a minor character in their lives and stories.”
“Their words reinforced a narrative I had heard my whole life: that I was ‘other,’ that I didn’t belong, that I wasn’t good enough, simply because I wasn’t like them,” she said. “And that feeling, I realize now, was, and is, shame, a shame for the things that made me different, a shame for the culture from which I came from. And to me, the most disappointing thing was that I felt it at all.”
She ended the op-ed touting her accomplishments and revealing her real first name.
“My real name is Loan. And I am just getting started.”
Hamill and Tran will next appear together in Star Wars: Episode IX, which is scheduled to arrive in theatres in December of 2019.
I said it before & I'll say it again: WHAT'S NOT TO LOVE? 😍
I love you, Loan… we don't deserve you & you ARE just getting started.#ReelLifeHeroRoseTico #RealLifeHeroKellyMarieTran https://t.co/wH7Hs4CQKT— Mark Hamill (@HamillHimself) August 21, 2018
Source: Mark Hamill
