Debbie Reynolds and Carrie Fisher: Hollywood’s mother-daughter fable
Some years ago I had the privilege of a long evening with Carrie Fisher, starting at her house in Beverly Hills and proceeding to a nearby restaurant, and she talked so expansively — about her memories of “Star Wars,” about her elec tric shock treatments, about Diet Coke, about everything — that I didn’t come away with just a few impressions of her. I came away with a few hundred.
Still, one stood out: She was obsessed with the subject of mothering. While giving me a tour of the house, she mentioned again and again that her mother, Debbie Reynolds, lived next door. Did I know that they shared a driveway? And that they saw each other daily? This proximity clearly rattled her, but it reassured her, too. It was equal parts intimidation and consolation — in other words, motherhood itself.
At dinner, Fisher volunteered that she was in the middle of a spat with the father of her own daughter about some childrearing issue. I don’t recall the details, but I do remember how agitated she became, even handing me her phone a nd i nsi s t i ng t hat I re a d t h e e mai l s t h a t s h e a n d her estranged partner had exchanged. I also remember thinking that if anything could wound this seemingly bulletproof survivor, it was the suggestion that she was an irresponsible, inattentive mom.
Fisher died on Dec. 27 and then, on the following day, so did Reynolds, reportedly while helping to plan her daughter’s funeral. Was it grief that did Reynolds in? A story in The Times by my colleague Benedict Carey presented that as a definite possibility, and an interview that Fisher’s brother, Todd, gave to “Good Morning America” also suggested as much. He said that Reynolds was utterly lost “without having Carrie to look after.”
Whatever the truth, it’s impossible not to regard the head-turning coincidence as a heartbreaking confirmation of the singular embrace in which Fisher and Reynolds held, and sometimes smothered, each other.
It’s also hard not to reflect on the relationship between these two movie-industry legends as a case study — upsized for Hollywood, sensationalized accordingly and on dis- play to the entire world — of the currents between almost every parent and child: the pride and the shame; the protectiveness and the destructiveness; the gratitude and the resentment.
A s i t h a p p e n s I s p e n t some time with Reynolds, too, though in 1996, more than a decade before I met Fisher. I was writing a profile of her because, after a long drought of no movies, she was starring in a new one. Its title: “Mother.” Its theme: the emotional havoc that a parent can unintentionally wreak on a child.
It was Fi sher who pestered Reynolds to pursue the part. She knew that Reynolds yearned for a comeback. And she sensed — somehow About her mother, Debbie Reynolds
— that Reynolds was right for the role.
What a fascinating tandem of accompli shment they were, and what a glorious mess. On the one hand, Fisher idolized her mother. Look at Lawrence Schiller’s amazing photograph, from 1963, of Fisher at the age of 6, watching Reynolds perform onstage. Schiller later reminisced that the little girl “was really mesmerized by her mother, always.”
But so were tens of millions of other people, and Reynolds diverted her attention to these fans. Fisher didn’t much care for that. What adoring child would?
“Walking down the street with her was like being in a parade,” she said at one point. “I had to share her. She belonged to everybody.”
Fisher tried to live up to her, following her into show business and, with the “Star Wars” movies, making an early, indelible mark there. Then she spurned her, refusing to see her for 10 years.
A sort of explanation came in “Postcards from the Edge,” a 1987 novel by Fisher that became a 1990 movie noteworthy not only for its blunt description of drug addiction but for the way the irrepressible mother and exasperated daughter at its center resemble Reynolds and her. They’re merciless together, but neither can shake the obligation or resist the inspiration of the other. They’re a screaming, sobbing love story of the most complicated and honest kind.
Reynolds actually put her
hand up to appear as the secrets, provocations: whatmother in “Postcards,” reaever she needed to hold the soning that everyone would audience’s interest. think that the character was They were the very definiher anyway. But the assigntion of game, this inimitable ment went t o a n a c t re s s mother-daughter duo. They whose currency onscreen recognized and respected far surpassed hers by then. that shared D.N.A. Shirley MacL aine played And they spent some of Reynolds to Meryl Streep’s what would turn out to be Fisher. their last years collaborating
With “Postcards,” Fisher on a documentary, “Bright switched her focus from Lights: Starring Debbie Reynacting to writing, and she olds and Carrie Fisher,” to found particular distinction be shown next Saturday on in trashing the very rites of HBO. celebrity that her mother so In it Fisher notes that their gleefully relished and dutiBeverly Hills homes are sepafully executed, to diminishrated “by one daunting hill,” ing returns. Reynolds weathand also says, of their regular ered that long movie drought visits: “I usually come to her. by performing in a Las Vegas I always come to her.” She’s casino bearing her name, and complaining about her subshe began her cabaret act servience. She’s confessing there by introducing herself her need. You can read the as “Carrie Fisher’s mother.” statement either of those two
Despite a turbulent domesways, and both are undoubttic life, she honed an image of edly correct. utter purity. Not Fisher. She The words with which she presented herself without paid tribute to her mother apology as a cyclone of sin. in a 2 010 inter view with
But they struck me as more The Times’s Brooks Barnes alike than different, both had that same double edge. of them exhibitioni sts to “She should be put on that the core. During one of my thing with the four presiinterviews with Reynolds, I dents — Mount Rushmore,” asked about an odd-looking Fisher said, praising Reyncontraption in the corner olds’s unflagging work ethic of her hotel room. “That’s and inextinguishable cheer. my ab cruncher,” she said, “Right after Teddy Roosevelt, then commenced a dembut have his eyes looking onstration, and suddenly I down at her cleavage.” was watching a 64-year-old Cleave the cleavage from with a blond bouffant thrust the comment and it captures and jiggle on the carpet in how so many of us view our front of me. parents. They’re larger than
During my evening with life. Monumental. But our Fi sher, which was soc ial desire to acknowledge that rather than professional, I is barely stronger than our listened to an almost nondetermination to cut them stop monologue of wordplay, down to size.