Kelly Marie Tran – the actor who played Rose Tico in Star Wars: The Last Jedi – has left social media, reportedly because of months of online harassment.
Tran hasn’t explicitly commented on her departure, but she has completely wiped her Instagram. The page is still accessible, with her bio reading "Afraid, but doing it anyway.”
Last Jedi director Rian Johnson, however, appeared to address the abuse on his own Twitter page. He called out a user who said that such harassment was just critiquing, labelling that argument as “disingenuous bulls***”.
He added: “You know the difference between not liking a movie and hatefully harassing a woman so bad she has to get off social media. And you know which of those two we’re talking about here.”
Plus, in response to the same user, Johnson said "it's clear as day" that criticism and "being an abusive a***hole to people online" are two different things and that "we're condemning the latter and not the former".
"On social media a few unhealthy people can cast a big shadow on the wall, but over the past 4 years I've met lots of real fellow SW fans," he continued. "We like & dislike stuff but we do it with humor, love & respect. We're the VAST majority, we're having fun & doing just fine."
Sadly, Tran isn’t the only female Star Wars actor to leave social media over online trolling. In 2016, Rey star Daisy Ridley closed her Twitter account after threats she received following tweets on gun regulation.
“I posted a thing about gun regulations because I was at an event in tribute to the Orlando shooting at Pulse. People weren't nice about how I looked. And I was like, 'I'm out.' Simple as that,” she told Glamour. “That is not what I signed up for."
She's also come off Instagram, explaining to Radio Times last year: "The more I read about teenage anxiety, the more I think it’s highly unhealthy for people’s mental health. It’s such a weird thing for young people to look at distorted images of things they should be.”
