The Private Side of Carrie Fisher: Her Last At-Home Interview
Carrie Fisher was in bed when I arrived at her Beverly Hills home on November 11. Not because she was sick — although she had flown in from London the night before and was weathering a truly nasty cold — but because her bed offered her something of an oasis. It’s where she often wrote (always in longhand), slept and vied for blanket space with her beloved dog, Gary Fisher, who rarely left her side.
I was buzzed through her front gate, which was emblazoned with playful metal signs, among them “Beware of Crabs,” “No Swimsuits in Lobby” and “Ask Me About Medication Side Effects.” Then after wending through the interconnected rooms of her Spanish-style hillside home, I settled in at the foot of her bed, cross-legged.
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I was there to talk about her latest book, The Princess Diarist, in which she revealed a three-month affair with Harrison Ford while the two filmed the first Star Wars movie, in 1976, when she was just 19 and he was a 34-year-old married father of two. Having come across old, angst-ridden journals she’d kept at the time, Carrie felt it was time to cop to the whirlwind romance about which rabid Star Wars fans could only dream. “It’s been FORTY years,” Carrie said of why she’d decided to go public. “How much longer could I wait?”
Sipping Coke over ice and sitting among pillows in a dark sweater and casual slacks, Carrie was her usual forthright, whip-smart and hilarious self. Asked how the famously private and taciturn Ford reacted when she gave him a heads up about her plan to reveal their romance, Carrie imitated Ford’s single-word response. “He went, ‘Lawyer!,” she said with an amused half-smile, lifting her hand high in the air as if summoning a waiter or taxi. When she gestured dramatically from the bed, Gary sleepily raised his head.
Truth be told, Carrie likely would not have published The Princess Diarist had Ford strongly objected (she said she sent him an early manuscript and offered to make changes; she did not hear back). An inherently decent person with little interest in embarrassing anyone (other than herself), Carrie simply saw value in sharing her life experience — one marked by humor as well as personal struggle — along the way.
As riveted as I was by Carrie’s account of her “intense” affair with Harrison Ford (as her fans would be the following week when PEOPLE excerpted Carrie’s book), it was her relationship with daughter Billie Lourd that stayed with me most from our chat.
I came into the interview well-schooled in Carrie’s demons — her struggles with addiction and bipolar disorder — and fluent in her extraordinary career. But it was her rather ordinary, and beautiful, love for Billie that made Carrie come even more alive for me. She was such a proud mom, and so happy that Billie was having a ball on Scream Queens. She was truly tickled that Billie jumped at the chance to record the “young Carrie” voice for the audio version of The Princess Diarist.
Before I left Carrie’s bedroom, I gave her a hug and thanked her for always being so honest. I would be the last journalist she entertained in her home. As I snaked my way back through her rambling, whimsically-decorated home, I walked past her Christmas tree, which was lit up even in the early afternoon, and noticed an array of family photos and a life-size Princess Leia character emerging from an old-time phone booth on her porch. Before getting into my car, I spotted a salvaged parking meter in the driveway designating a special spot. The parking sign read: “Only Hookers.” Naturally, it made me laugh.
