‘THE PRINCESS DIARIST’: CARRIE FISHER’S LAST MEMOIR
Princess Leia’s sharp-tongued alter ego tells all
It was predictable but eerily prescient. In her November 2016 memoir, “The Princess Diarist,” Carrie Fisher suggested that Princess Leia’s signature hairstyle (“the buns of Navarone”) would shape how every film-going human envisioned her for the rest of her life.
And then she added, parenthetically, “And probably even beyond — it’s hard to imagine any TV obituary not using a photo of that cute little round-faced girl with goofy buns on either side of her inexperienced head.” Sadly, she was right.
Pictures of that youthful “Star Wars” heroine invariably accompanied reports of Ms. Fisher’s Dec. 27 death at age 60. The passing of her heartbroken mother, 84-year-old performer Debbie Reynolds, just a day later ensured that the pair would forever stand out in a year of deep, dark loss.
But if the previously reported revelations about Ms. Fisher’s long-ago affair with Harrison Ford weren’t reason enough, “The Princess Diarist” now is must reading for any fan of the space opera or the actresswriter known for her Hollywood history, witty wordplay, self-deprecating humor and candor.
For instance, she called celebrity autograph sessions “lap dances” (the exchange of a signature for money) and initially wondered, “How did I get here? I didn’t need money this badly, did I?”
Ms. Fisher did, due to a “pilfering business manager,” but acknowledged, “There’s something incredibly sweet and mystifying about people waiting in lines for so long.” They generally were kind, courteous and often clad in homemade costumes as they breathlessly rattled off all the ways they loved or identified with her or introduced their children to her famous franchise.
The core of the book comes from three diaries Ms. Fisher kept during the 1976 filming of “Star Wars.” She stashed them under bedroom floorboards and rediscovered them while remodeling.
They provide a vivid flashback as she shares her “almost full-on obsession” with the older married actor playing Han Solo but also recollects the doubleduty meeting with “Star Wars” filmmaker George Lucas and “Carrie” director Brian De Palma.
Each needed a leading lady age 18 to 22, and she fit the bill but didn’t land in the echo chamber of Carrie playing Carrie in “Carrie.”
“They would pay me nothing and fly me economy — a fact that would haunt my mother for months — but I was Leia, and that was all that truly mattered.” She and the others technically received about $500 a week for the first film, and Ms. Fisher earned a lifetime of being Leia.
“Sometimes I feel as if I’d rather concern myself with … almost anything. But as it happens I’ve spent the lion’s share of my life, starting at 19 and continuing 40 years on jauntily in the present, being as much myself as Princess Leia.
“Answering questions about her, defending her, fed up with being mistaken for her, overshadowed by her, struggling with my resentment of her, making her my own, finding myself, keeping company with her, loving her … wishing she’d finally just go away and leave me to be myself alone, but then wondering who I’d be without her ….”
She’d still be smart, funny, fast with a quip and insightful, ruminating on such subjects as “perpetual celebrity — the kind where any mention of you will interest a significant percentage of the public until the day you die, even if that day comes decades after your last real contribution to the culture.” It is “exceedingly rare, reserved for the likes of Muhammad Ali.”
Ms. Fisher’s contribution is far from over. She is expected to appear in December’s hotly anticipated “Star Wars: Episode VIII,” but she and her mother achieved their own perpetual celebrity in life and in double death.