As we countdown the last few weeks to the release of The Rise of Skywalker, and the final time we will see Carrie Fisher as General Leia, her daughter Billie Lourd talks about her relationship with Carrie, the part Princess Leia has played in their lives and how she is now the protector of the character.
Watching the original Star Wars movies as a kid in my mom’s bed, I never imagined the lady in the TV would get older and get back in the TV. And I definitely never imagined we would end up in the TV together. But that’s where we ended up. Two little ladies in the TV together–Leia and little Lieutenant Connix.
We wrapped The Last Jedi a little less than six months before she died. I went back to L.A. to film the show I was on, and she stayed in London to film the show she was on. 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.
She used to say that in the original movies, she got to be “the only girl in an all-boys fantasy.” But with each new Star Wars movie, the all-boys fantasy started to become a boys-and-girls fantasy. She was no longer a part of a fantasy, but the fantasy herself. Leia was not just a sidekick one of the male leads had on his arm, or a damsel in distress. She was the hero herself. The princess became the general.
