Star Wars: The Last Jedi‘s Kelly Marie Tran has purged her Instagram, allegedly due to long-term harassment by fans.
Earlier this week, Tran’s popular Instagram page — ordinarily full of the Star Wars actress’ nerdy passions and thoughtful musings — was suddenly empty of content.
Gone are the delightfully giddy posts of her journey to The Last Jedi premiere. Tran’s last-minute Porg costumes have disappeared, along with her inspiring posts to followers struggling with self-doubt or anxiety. (Tran’s profile description, “Afraid, but doing it anyway,” remains on her account.)
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Kelly Marie Tran hasn’t commented publicly on her reasoning for purging her Instagram — nor, of course, does she need to. But without further information, it’s hard not connect the sudden departure from the many months of trolling, harassment, and abusive comments that Tran has endured from so-called Star Wars fans.
Racist remarks, attacks on her Star Wars character Rose Tico, and claims that Tran “ruined” The Last Jedi all proliferated in the comments, whether or not her posts were related to Star Wars. Twitter user Paul B. shared just a fraction of the invective that Tran had to endure.
Just a taste of what Kelly Marie Tran was dealing with pic.twitter.com/4CtMuMbf0R
— Paul B. (@trekkiebabble) June 5, 2018
Tran made her big-screen debut as the irrepressible Resistance mechanic Rose Tico in The Last Jedi. As the first woman of color in a major role in the franchise (and a huge nerd!) Tran also became an ambassador for diversity and positivity in Star Wars.
Sadly, this is not the first time that “fans” have seemingly driven a Star Wars star off of social media. Daisy Ridley left Twitter due to intense scrutiny in the early days of production on The Force Awakens, and then deleted her Instagram entirely after a post about gun violence attracted swaths of negative comments. Ridley never laid the blame for her departure on that gun-happy attention, but as with Tran, the timing was hard to ignore.
Tran’s departure from Instagram also takes place at time when tensions are percolating within the Star Wars fandom. The underperformance of Solo: A Star Wars Story at the box office has reignited conversations about the direction of Star Wars that have not always been polite, kind, or productive.
Hopefully, the Star Wars fandom as a whole will take a lead from the gracious enthusiasm that Kelly Marie Tran always displayed on Instagram. At it’s heart, Star Wars is a story of light triumphing over darkness, and the fan dialogue deserves nothing less.