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Five things we learned from ‘Growing Up Fisher’
What’s it like to be part of a royal Hollywood family that included a halfsister who played a Star Wars princess?
That’s what actress, singer and director Joely Fisher reveals in her new memoir, Growing up Fisher: Musings, Memories & Misadventures, out Tuesday.
Almost a year after the deaths of Carrie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds, the daughter of entertainers
Eddie Fisher and Connie Stevens opens up about growing up in “the Fishbowl.”
It was the deaths of “Sissy Fish and Mama Debs,” as Joely writes, that “was the instigating factor for why I’ve invited you all in.”
Here are five things we learned from Joely’s book about Carrie and the Fisher family:
1 Eddie Fisher’s ex-wives lived next door to each other.
Connie Stevens, Joely’s mother, and Debbie Reynolds, Carrie’s mother, were both ex-wives of singer Eddie Fisher. Coincidentally, Joely’s mom bought the house next door to Debbie’s.
“For five of the seven years we lived there, we would have daily interactions with Debbie — coming out onto the deck and waving to each other,” Joely writes. Eddie visited his two exes and his children there a grand total of one time.
2 Joely was exposed to drugs at a very young age.
Joely recounts rolling joints for her mother when she was just a kid, and as a toddler, having “a baby’s-eye view of my own father tying off, prepping a needle, and injecting drugs into his veins.” Joely, like Carrie, struggled with her own addictions.
3 Carrie acted like a big sister and sponsor.
In 2004, on a two-night bender in New York, Joely says she called Carrie for help.
“She talked me off the ledge,” Joely writes. “Take a shower, drink a beer. She was the only one I could talk to who wouldn’t judge me, who knew the experience I was having. One junkie to another.”
Carrie took Joely to AA meetings, and Joely also saw Carrie at low points. There was one time, in 1980, when Joely says Carrie showed up at her house with
Blues Brothers stars John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd, her then-fiancé, in sunglasses, silent and clearly on drugs.
4 TMZ knew about Carrie’s heart attack before Joely did
Joely and Carrie’s last conversation was via text — a lengthy chat about career, aging and their moms, she writes. It “went deep,” Joely says, with Carrie making jokes that were “not fit for prime time.”
Shortly after that talk, Joely got a phone call from Harvey Levin at TMZ, asking for confirmation about Carrie having a heart attack on the descent of her flight from London to Los Angeles.
“What?!” Joely writes. “And how did Harvey Levin get my cellphone number?”
After receiving that information, Joely had to perform in a play in which she had no understudy.
5 Carrie had a code name in the hospital ICU: Trauma Villa
“It was a non sequitur with the dark humor Carrie would have so loved,” Joely says in the memoir.
Carrie was surrounded by her daughter, Billie; her ex and Billie’s dad, Bryan; her brother, Todd; Joely; Joely’s sister, Tricia; Carrie’s best friend, Bruce Wagner; Carrie’s assistant, Corby McCoin; and Donald, a man who had cared for Debbie for years, when she died.
“I knew Debbie was not far behind,” Joely says. “But it was shocking that the loss was a mere twenty-four hours later. And it made complete sense. They were best friends. It was mother first, friend later in their lives, but Debbie did live for her daughter.”