Kelly Marie Tran Is Telling Her Own Story

Kelly Marie Tran is no stranger to breaking barriers in Hollywood. In 2017, she became the first Southeast Asian actress to star in the Star Wars franchise; and in 2021, she voiced Disney’s first Southeast Asian princess in Raya and the Last Dragon. At the 2022 Oscars, Tran, a daughter of Vietnamese refugees, wore Vietnam’s traditional ao dai dress on the red carpet.

But Tran’s success came with some serious public pushback: Her casting as Rose Tico in Star Wars: The Last Jedi launched a torrent of online vitriol—both racist and misogynistic—from the franchise’s fandom, driving her off social media and into a space of self reflection. In 2018, she deleted all of her Instagram posts and replaced her bio with the current statement: “Afraid, but doing it anyways.” The experience, she says, fundamentally changed the way she navigated life in the spotlight.

“It honestly forced me into therapy—in a really good way,” Tran reflects, with a pensive pause, while speaking to ELLE.com over Zoom. “I had to do a lot of self-work to understand: Why was I so affected by this? How was I socialized to immediately internalize the opinions of strangers, I mean, misinformed strangers? My new motto is that I’m no longer allowing misinformed people to inform my life.”

Though therapy was a start to this journey, Tran says she finally reached a deeper sense of realization over the last year while working simultaneously on her three latest projects: the sibling dramedy Forge; Hulu’s body horror flick Control Freak; and The Wedding Banquet—a modernized reimagining of Ang Lee’s seminal 1993 rom-com directed by Andrew Ahn (Fire Island).

“I think the most full-circle moment was this past year, recognizing that every film that I did was by an Asian filmmaker,” Tran explains. “And most of them were queer. So I’m like, ‘Wow, I am really proud that the things younger me were afraid of in my identity, the things I felt like I had to hide, the things I felt like I had to run away from—these are now the things that I am making art about and that I’m proud of.’”

In The Wedding Banquet, which premieres on April 18, Tran plays Angela, a queer woman who enters into a green-card marriage with her friend Min (Han Gi-chan), closeted heir to a South Korean corporate empire, after his boyfriend Chris (Bowen Yang) rejects his marriage proposal. In exchange, Min offers to fund her and her partner Lee’s (played by Killers of the Flower Moon breakout star Lily Gladstone) next IVF attempt—a plan that would be foiled by the arrival of Min’s grandmother (Youn Yuh-jung of Minari).

Like Lee’s original, which was a groundbreaking work for its early ’90s audience, the film juxtaposes a somewhat fantastical and at times comedic plot with the complex reality queer people must navigate when building a family. For Tran, who came out as queer in November 2024, the role hit surprisingly close to home.

“It was weird to be auditioning for Wedding Banquet and feeling like, ‘Whoa, this character’s literally dealing with exactly what I'm dealing with,’” Tran muses. “To be able to use your own experience rarely happens. It’s both a gift and terrifying. But I always say that, by the end of a job, if I did it right, I won't know where I start and the character begins. That’s very true here.”

The similarities between Tran and Angela extend to the delicate art of being an Asian American daughter: In the film, Angela struggles to reconcile her queerness with her mother (Joan Chen), while Tran describes her own real-life coming out as “not the most joyous experience.” There’s a common theme in Asian American narratives, she says, about parents prioritizing saving face over their children’s emotional needs.

Han Gi-Chan, Youn Yuh-Jung, and Kelly Marie Tran in Andrew Ahn’s The Wedding Banquet.

“No matter how much therapy I go to, there's always going to be that little girl inside of me that so badly wants the approval of my parents—regardless of how misinformed I think they may be in moments,” she adds. “It was just such a cathartic experience to be able to play those moments out on screen.”

Tran emphasizes that it was the team behind the film, especially director Ahn, who created the environment that made such a vulnerable performance possible. “Andrew is the kindest, most genuine soul,” she says. “He knew exactly what he wanted, but still gave us room to be creative and play. We all became friends immediately. By the end, we were just having fun, improvising, being silly.”

She also notes that Gladstone helped bring the film’s nuanced portrayal of modern queer relationships to life. Despite meeting for the first time on set, their connection was immediate. “Andrew had us do this exercise, asking each other, ‘What’s a secret you keep from each other as a couple? What’s a secret you share that no one else knows?’” Tran recalls. “It was such a quick way to build trust and create a history for the relationship.”

Lily Gladstone and Tran play couple Lee and Angela.

What makes The Wedding Banquet especially resonant is that it’s a story about queer people—told by queer people. For Tran, that behind-the-scenes reality was just as meaningful as the on-screen magic. “I’ve never been on a set that was so queer—not just the cast and creatives, but the crew too. There was this feeling of, ‘Oh my God, we’re sharing our story.’ It was truly healing being on that set.”

Looking ahead to the film’s release, Tran believes The Wedding Banquet carries a message that feels especially urgent in today’s political climate, with LGBTQ+ and reproductive rights under increasing threat.

“The hope is that people who aren’t exposed to the queer community see this movie and recognize that love is love,” she says. “ And recognize humanness, feel compassion—maybe even compassion to the point of being able to be allies to this community, especially in a time when it is being threatened in a very terrifying way.”

On a more personal note, Tran also hopes “that my mom loves it.” When asked if her mother has seen the film yet, Tran laughs. She says she’s “very excited” for her parents to watch, but then pauses. “I think I communicated enough in that silence for you to make your own assumptions about what that experience is going to be like.”

Tran says it was “truly healing” being on the Wedding Banquet set. Here, she’s pictured alongside Gladstone, Han, and Bowen Yang.

Beyond The Wedding Banquet, Tran is showing no signs of slowing down. She recently premiered Forge at SXSW, a dark comedy crime thriller where she plays an FBI agent investigating an art forgery ring. “It’s an incredible film,” she says. “And it’s directed by a queer Asian female filmmaker [Jing Ai Ng], which makes it even more exciting.”

She’s also stepping into horror with Control Freak, a chilling psychological thriller releasing on Hulu. “That was probably the hardest movie I’ve ever worked on,” she admits. “It was a 22-day shoot, my character is in every scene, and there was just a lot of blood and cutting off body parts. But I had a great time.”

Yet, even with all these projects, Tran makes time to unplug and unwind. “On my last day off [at SXSW], I stayed an extra day in Austin, watched Yuri on Ice, went on a hike, and just spent time with friends.”

It’s clear that for Tran, The Wedding Banquet marks a turning point—not just in her career, but in how she sees herself. “We can’t choose the circumstances we’re born into, but we can create a community around us that accepts us and loves us for who we are,” she says. “All the parts of us we’re scared of—we get to celebrate now.”