Every actor has a role that got away, and To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before star Lana Condor has a pretty major one. She was nearly Rose Tico in Rian Johnson’s Star Wars: The Last Jedi until Kelly Marie Tran officially nabbed her first studio movie in a galaxy far, far away instead. According to the 23-year-old actress, she was among the final few too!
Lana Condor dropped the reveal last year, recalling the moment she met John Boyega just before the actor broke out as Finn. But now the actress has offered more details about just how close she was to landing the role before Kelly Marie Tran was picked instead. In her words:
I was down to the last two of the last three [people] for Star Wars. She got it, and it makes so much more sense for her to play it. I read with John Boyega. I did all the reads and the chemistry [tests] and the director [meetings]. That one was brutal just because it’s Star Wars.
Yeah… this is a rough one. While speaking to Yahoo! ahead of To All The Boys: Always and Forever’s release on Netflix, Lana Condor went into detail about just how close she was to playing Rose Tico in Star Wars: The Last Jedi. She did a number of chemistry reads with John Boyega and had a number of meetings with Rian Johnson about the project, but when it came to the end of the line, she was one of the last actresses to be cut.
In some ways, it’s a huge compliment to Lana Condor. She was so good that she was seriously being considered for the role. But, at the same time, it must hurt a lot more to feel like she was that close to starring in a Star Wars movie and it didn’t work out in her favor. The actress went on to say that she believes that “everything happens for a reason,” and if she had become Rose Tico, she wouldn’t have been able to play Lara Jean in the To All The Boys rom-com trilogy. Condor spoke more about facing rejection in Hollywood with this:
And it’s very hard not to think that it’s because of you and not because of something else. It’s very hard not to go, ‘It’s because I suck.’
Lana Condor apparently has faced close calls in other instances too, previously being cast for a role in a TV show before being cut at the last minute and the role being recast to someone else. The audition process can be a grueling one, especially for a young actress like Condor, but she’s been pretty lucky. Before Star Wars, she got to portray Jubilee in X-Men: Apocalypse for her first-ever movie role, and she worked with Robert Rodriguez in Alita: Battle Angel.
Lana Condor will wrap up her time as Lara Jean with the third and final To All The Boys film on February 12. Check out the trailer to the Valentine’s Day weekend release:
It’s the end of an era for Lana Condor and Noah Centineo, her partner in crime here, who became an overnight teen heartthrob when he first debuted his role as Kovinsky. Centineo is heading to the DCEU to play Atom Smasher in Black Adam, as well as star in the Masters of the Universe movie as He-Man. Both of these actors have bright futures ahead of them without Star Wars.
