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‘No one could have played Leia like mum’
Actor Billie Lourd says, as a child, she did not like to see her mother, actor Carrie Fisher, transform into Princess Leia (Fisher’s role in Star Wars films) as her mother would disappear when the character appeared. However, over the years, she has realised why people connected with the part so much.
“She (Leia) is femininity at its finest,” Lourd wrote in a moving essay for Time Magazine about her mother, who died in December 2016 at the age of 60.
Fisher had just wrapped reprising her role of Leia in director Rian Johnson’s Star Wars: The Last Jedi. But she tragically died before the film’s shooting began. Fisher will posthumously appear in the upcoming movie.
“We wrapped The Last Jedi a little less than six months before she died. I went back to Los Angeles (USA) to film the show I was on, and she stayed in London (UK) to film her show. One of the last times we spoke on the phone, she talked about how excited she was that the next movie in the trilogy was going to be Leia’s movie. Her movie,” Lourd wrote.
Sharing her childhood memory of her mother, Lourd said she did not like watching the Star Wars movies. “When Leia was around, there wasn’t as much room for my mom — for Carrie. As a child, I couldn’t understand why people loved Leia. I didn’t want to watch her movie, I didn’t want to dress up like her, I didn’t even want to talk about her. I just wanted my mom — the one who lived on Earth, not Tatooine,” she said.
Over the years she realised that no one could have played Leia the way her mother did. “I realised then that Leia is more than just a character. She’s a feeling. She’s strength. She’s grace. She’s wit... She knows what she wants, and she gets it. She doesn’t need anyone to defend her, because she defends herself. And no one could have played her like my mother. Princess Leia is Carrie Fisher. Carrie Fisher is Princess Leia. The two go hand in hand,” Lourd wrote.