Kelly Marie Tran remembers her audition for The Last Jedi on the Collider Ladies Night podcast, looking back to her first moments with Rose Tico, and just how secretive the process was.
“I remember getting an email, just like you normally would for an audition, but the email said the project was ‘The Untitled Rian Johnson Project,’ which after a little bit of light Googling, it was pretty clear that he was doing Episode VIII,. We didn’t get sides to prepare. They wouldn’t even let you have them. So we would get to the audition and then you’d be given these sides that were printed on red paper so that you wouldn’t take them with you.”
“It was essentially a cold read, was the first audition. And I remember the character description said, ‘20s, female, character-y,’ and that was it. You didn’t really know anything about it. So yeah, it was wild. I will say, the best thing that I did was probably just try as much as possible to be present in the moment and pay attention to what the scene was about, as opposed to trying to act a genre or play to a specific universe if that makes sense.
“There were two scenes and one of them was a scene between myself and John Boyega, Finn. It’s the casino scene where we’re looking for the Master Codebreaker and then the sort of monologue scene where Rose is talking about wanting to put her fist through this lousy, beautiful town.”
