Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker writer Chris Terrio claimed the limited footage available for Carrie Fisher's General Leia Organa is part of the reason Kelly Marie Tran's Rose Tico had such a small role in the movie.
It was no secret that director J.J. Abrams was going to have a tough time giving Leia a proper sendoff due to the fact he could only use extra footage not used in previous films. Speaking to Awards Daily, Terrio said this was a contributing factor in Rose's 1 minute and 16 seconds of screen time. "One of the reasons that Rose has a few less scenes than we would like her to have has to do with the difficulty of using Carrie’s footage in the way we wanted to," he said.
Explaining how he'd wanted to give Rose more of an arc, Terrio continued, "We wanted Rose to be the anchor at the rebel base who was with Leia. We thought we couldn’t leave Leia at the base without any of the principals who we love, so Leia and Rose were working together. As the process evolved, a few scenes we’d written with Rose and Leia turned out to not meet the standard of photorealism that we’d hoped for." However, he maintained, "The last thing we were doing was deliberately trying to sideline Rose."
Directed and co-written by J.J. Abrams, Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker stars Daisy Ridley, Adam Driver, John Boyega, Oscar Isaac, Lupita Nyong’o, Domhnall Gleeson, Kelly Marie Tran, Joonas Suotamo, Billie Lourd, Keri Russell, Anthony Daniels, Mark Hamill, Billy Dee Williams and Carrie Fisher, with Naomi Ackie and Richard E. Grant.