The 'Star Wars: The Last Jedi' actress quit Instagram in June after receiving abuse online from fans who took issue with her character in the movie.
- Aug 22, 2018
AceShowbiz - Actress Kelly Marie Tran is vowing to fight the bullies who sent her into a self-hate spiral after attacking her role in the latest Star Wars movie.
The Asian-American actress, who joined the franchise as Rose Tico in 2017's The Last Jedi, quit Instagram in June after receiving abuse online from fans who took issue with her character.
Tran did not address her departure from the social media site at the time, but she has now written an article for The New York Times, revealing why she felt the need to get away from all the online negativity.
"It wasn't their (bullies) words, it's that I started to believe them," she writes. "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. And those words awakened something deep inside me - a feeling I thought I had grown out of..."
The actress goes on to explain the bullying led to self-doubt and she even began to wonder what her life would be like if she wasn't Asian.
"For months, I went down a spiral of self-hate, into the darkest recesses of my mind, places where I tore myself apart, where I put their words above my own self-worth," she adds.
But in recent weeks she came to realise society needed to change, not her.
"Yes, I have been lied to," she adds. "We all have. And it was in this realization that I felt a different shame - not a shame for who I was, but a shame for the world I grew up in. And a shame for how that world treats anyone who is different..."
And she vows to continue to keep fighting for minorities.
"You might know me as Kelly," she writes. "I am the first woman of color to have a leading role in a Star Wars movie. I am the first Asian woman to appear on the cover of Vanity Fair. My real name is Loan. And I am just getting started."
