I think it’s a big misunderstanding to say that Kathleen Kennedy put that scene in the film but I’ve seen a few people suggest that. What Rian said was that Kathleen was interested in seeing Leia show force powers, it’s a stretch to believe that Kathy decided how they should be shown. She would leave the writing to the writer.
That section of the interview starts at about 19:20.
Nice that they gave her some Force-related scenes but they didn’t bother to make her relevant to the plot other than being an RotJ Ackbar-like character like in TFA (what I mean is: she’s the boss of the rebel band… and that’s it). These are the priorities.
Honestly, how is this a big improvement over RotJ? Or even the entire OT? Because Leia didn’t have a character arc in the OT other than a devolution of her character in the Jabba scenes (“Who cares about the galaxy? I must save my love interest!”). And the twist in RotJ had no impact to the story other than two bits of the climax (the Vader-Luke duel and solving the love triangle after the destruction of the second Death Star). And it’s quite sad how Han and Luke gets all the attention in the ST, even after leaving the rest of the galaxy at the mercy of the First Order, but Leia remains all the whole time, creates a paramilitary force and warns the New Republic and yet she’s mostly a background character in these movies.
Sorry, I’m really disappointed with how they have handled the female characters in the Disney movies. They’re not really a huge improvement compared with the Lucas era, other than being more in number, technically being the main protagonists and the lack of sexualization/forced romance.
I think Carrie Fisher is on record as saying that Episode 9 was to be ‘her’ film? (in regards of the 3 main OT cast… Han got most of the scenes in TFA, Luke had most of TLJ, and that IX would Leia’s) - obviously, and sadly, that is no longer going to be the case.
That’s what I’ve heard too. It makes sense to give them “one movie each” like that, since the sequel trilogy isn’t mainly about them. If the three of them had big roles in the same movie there would be a lot less room to develop the new main characters. It’s very sad that we won’t get to see what Ep 9 had in store for her.