Spoilers are such a serious business in movie making that actors can even have their salaries cut if they end up revealing things. Sometimes, this means having to lie to your own family so they don't even know you're making the movie at all. Such was the case with Kelly Marie Tran. She's got a role in Star Wars: The Last Jedi and the fact that she was even in the movie was being kept a secret, so the actress told her family she was in an entirely different country making an entirely different movie. She even brought props into the subterfuge to sell the lie. According to Tran...
I lied to them and said I was doing an indie movie in Canada. I bought them maple syrup. I went all in.
An indie movie in Canada may be about as far away from making a new Star Wars film as you could possibly get. The maple syrup is a nice touch though. It's the sort of random thing you bring somebody when you feel like you need to bring them something back from your trip. It's just Canada, right? It's no big deal. Nobody has any reason to not believe the cover story, and the maple syrup just makes the whole thing feel like it's just a normal situation.
Of course, as E! Online reports, the truth was anything put normal. Kelly Marie Tran called her family first as soon as she was allowed to tell them the truth, that she has a role in Star Wars: The Last Jedi. While we know that the actress is now in the film, that doesn't mean we know much more about the movie itself. Tran has revealed that her character's name is Rose and that she works in maintenance as part of the Resistance. Of course, while that tells us who the character is, it doesn't do much to tell us why the character is important. We don't know how Rose will fit into the story or why the character is somebody we even need to know. Granted, numerous heroes within the Star Wars universe started with humble beginnings, so just because Rose starts out repairing X-wings doesn't mean that's where she's going to end up.
The role does seem to show, however, that this new Star Wars trilogy is dealing a lot more with the "regular" people of the universe. Previous films have focused almost exclusively on Jedi and princesses but Star Wars: The Force Awakens gave us one hero who was a Stormtrooper that didn't even have a name and one pilot among many in the Resistance. We've never met anybody in the maintenance department before.
Keeping the secret may have been fairly easy for Kelly Marie Tran because her family likely had no reason to not believe whatever it was she said. Even without the maple syrup they probably would have believed her. She says she's literally never lied before.
I'm a good kid and I never lied until now.
We're guessing the family understood the need for secrecy and was probably incredibly excited to learn the truth. We're equally excited to see Kelly Marie Tran's character on screen when Star Wars: The Last Jedi debuts in December.
