Star Wars actor Kelly Marie Tran has come out as queer.
The 35-year-old Hollywood star candidly shared a personal note about her identity in a conversation with Vanity Fair about filming Andrew Ahn’s remake of the 1993 Ang Lee film, The Wedding Banquet.
“I haven’t said this publicly yet, but I’m a queer person,” Tran said in the article published November 22.
She explained how her role in Ahn’s new queer romantic-comedy inspired her to open up, saying: “The thing that really excited me about it was I got to play a person that I felt like I knew. I don’t feel like I’m acting at all in this movie.
“I’m here doing this amazing movie with these amazing people. I’ve never been in a queer space before. I’ve never truly felt this accepted before,” she continued.
Tran was cast in Ahn’s movie as Angela, a woman who’s trying to have a baby through in vitro fertilization with Lily Gladstone’s character, Lee.
On coming out to her mother, the Sweet Tooth star said it was very similar to how her character comes out to her own mom, played by Joan Chen.
“I came out to my mom in a very specific experience,” Tran said. “The scenes that I have with Joan Chen in this movie are very similar to the experience that I had.”
Tran didn’t go into much detail about how exactly she told her mother, or her response. However, she admitted that even telling Vanity Fair was overwhelming. “I haven’t done this in a while. I’m getting freaking emotional over here,” she said.
The original The Wedding Banquet tells the story of Wai-Tung, a bisexual Taiwanese immigrant, and his life living in New York with his boyfriend. As someone with a conservative family, Wai-Tung ultimately decides he must marry a woman from mainland China to please his parents, who end up traveling to the Big Apple to throw him a traditional Taiwanese wedding.
Now, Ahn is modernizing the story and bringing the production to Seattle, focusing on the IVF storyline between Tran and Gladstone’s characters as well as their friends — Chris (Bowen Yang) and Min (Han Gi-chan) — who’re also in a relationship and living in the guest house.
“I was really focused on trying to tell a story that felt reflective of the community as I’ve experienced it growing up,” Ahn told Vanity Fair.
When Tran was asked her opinion on the adaptation, she simply said: “The spirit is the same, and I think it’s even more queer.”
