Kelly Marie Tran knows what it’s like to be on the wrong side of fame after being plucked from obscurity to portray Rose Tico in 2017’s “Star Wars: The Last Jedi.”

Tran has spoken out about why she left social media after receiving racist and sexist abuse.

In 2015, she was cast in Star Wars: The Last Jedi as Resistance maintenance technician Rose Tico, a dream role that she would reprise in The Rise of Skywalker, which debuted in December 2019. However, following the release of The Last Jedi, the actress was bombarded with online vitriol directed at her looks and race. She removed herself from the spotlight and erased her social media accounts as a result.

She described why she chose to take a break from the internet in a new interview with Teen Vogue. “We’re living in a world where we’re all constantly being bombarded all of the time with so much stimulus, and I don’t know that we are all conscious of the ways in which it affects us,” Tran explains. “For me, I knew that the most important thing was to protect my mental health, and make myself a space where I felt like I could create again and where I could be an artist again, which for a time, I didn’t know if I could do that again.”

She went on to say, “That being said, I don’t think leaving social media is the answer for everyone, I think it was the answer for me in the moment. I recognize my own privilege and understand that there are some people who have to be on social media for their work and their positions, and… the thing about it that makes me really upset is just what you were saying in the beginning of us initially speaking, where it’s like, why are we as artists, or as writers, or as creators in the spaces on social media, why are we the ones that have to normalize receiving harassment? That should not be okay.”

Tran, 32, told The Hollywood Reporter that things had gotten so terrible that she had to seek help.

The star of the new Disney Plus film “Raya and the Last Dragon,” claimed she learnt something crucial there.

Kelly Marie Tran as Rose Tico in “The Last Jedi.” Disney/Lucasfilm

“What’s interesting to me about working in this industry is that certain things become so public, even if you don’t really mean them to be, [like] the succession of events in which I left the internet for my own sanity,” she told the publication. “It was basically me being like, ‘Oh, this isn’t good for my mental health. I’m obviously going to leave this.’

“If someone doesn’t understand me or my experience, it shouldn’t be my place to have to internalize their misogyny or racism or all of the above,” she added. “Maybe they just don’t have the imagination to understand that there are different types of people living in the world.”

Tran said that she turned down a number of opportunities after Star Wars because she couldn’t recall why she wanted to act in the first place.

She went on to claim: “It felt like I was just hearing the voice of my agents and my publicity team and all of these people telling me what to say and what to do and how to feel. And I realised, I didn’t know how I felt anymore.

“Any time that happens, I have to close up shop and go away for a while and really interact in the real world – read books and journals and go on hikes and look at a tree and remind myself that there was a fire that burned inside of me before Star Wars, before any of this. I needed to find that again.”

During that time, Tran’s Star Wars colleagues, including Luke Skywalker actor Mark Hamill and The Last Jedi director Rian Johnson, rallied to her rescue. “Star Wars’ trolls: ‘#GetALifeNerds,” Hamill tweeted. Johnson said these online harassers were “a few unhealthy people” who “cast a big shadow on the wall.” It was insufficient.

Tran wasn’t the only one who dropped off social media after filming the Star Wars prequel trilogy. Daisy Ridley, who portrays Rey, has likewise removed herself from social media.

“I think everybody tried to mold that into something else. It really wasn’t a story,” Ridley said during a DragCast appearance. “I was asked to go on it, and, at the time, I was like, ‘Okay,’ and then it got to the point where I didn’t want to be on it and I was at my friend’s house in L.A., and I remember being like, ‘Oh, I don’t want to be on Instagram,’ and they were like, ‘Well, why don’t you come off?’ and I was like, ‘Oh.’ And it was really a nice, autonomous decision. Because I was like, ‘Oh, I don’t actually have to be on it. This is nice.’ And I always had a limit to what I shared anyway and, honestly, my life isn’t that exciting. So there were a lot of separate things.”

Tran will not be returning online. The actress told THR that she’s in a better position now that she’s taken a break from social media.

“I’ve truly just been so much happier without being on the internet,” she remarked. “I’ve had my agents tell me [I’m] forgoing brand partnerships, but I’m not here to sell flat-tummy tea to young girls.”