A month before both Carrie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds passed on, only a day apart, the “Star Wars” heroine looked back on her loving, complicated relationship with her Hollywood legend mom.
Growing up in show business, Fisher had an unorthodox relationship with her mom, although they grew closer as adults. A documentary about their lives, “Bright Lights: Starring Carrie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds,” will premiere on HBO on Jan. 7.
Reynolds, the “Singin’ in the Rain” star and Broadway icon, died Wednesday at 84 — just one day after Fisher died at 60. Here are excerpts from Fisher’s comments on NPR’s “Fresh Air,” with host Terry Gross:
GROSS: You had a very contentious relationship with her when you were a teenager, and I think that probably continued into your 20s, in that, you know, you worked in her Broadway show… How did your relationship change as she became an older woman? … Is the relationship still contentious? Has it changed?
FISHER: Not at all. I could appreciate – she’s an immensely powerful woman. And I just admire my mother very much. She also annoys me sometimes when she’s, you know, mad at the nurses. But, you know, she’s an extraordinary woman, extraordinary.
There are very few women from her generation who worked like that, who just kept a career going all her life and raised children and had horrible relationships and lost all her money and got it back again. I mean, she’s had an amazing life, and she’s someone to admire.
GROSS: Did you appreciate her strength and her accomplishments more as you got older?
FISHER: Oh, God, yeah. No, when I was a kid, I just thought she was someone who was telling me what to do. And I didn’t want to do it.
GROSS: How did you feel about her celebrity when you were young? Was it helpful? Was it intrusive?
FISHER: Well, I had to share her, and I didn’t like that. When we went out, people sort of walked over me to get her. And, no, I didn’t like it. I didn’t like it. And I – you know, people thought that – I overheard someone saying, well, she thinks she’s so great because she’s Debbie Reynolds’ daughter. And I didn’t like it.
It made me different from other people, and I wanted to be the same. I wanted to be, you know, just no different than anybody else.
GROSS: Your mother’s most iconic film is “Singing In The Rain,” you know, one of the great musicals of all time. What are your thoughts about the movie? And if you like it now, did you always, or did it take you a while to appreciate that film, too?
FISHER: No, no, I always liked it. It’s brilliant. I mean, to do the transition from sound – from silent to sound is a brilliant, brilliant time to focus on. And what was interesting to me is that there’s three people acting in the movie then. It’s two men and a female. And it’s the same with “Star Wars.” And both movies were sort of, you know, iconic at the – well, they did the AFI 10 top films, and one was “Singing In The Rain” and one was “Star Wars.”
Almost exactly one month before she passed away, the quotable and lovable Carrie Fisher appeared on NPR's "Fresh Air," where she dispensed pearls of wisdom -- as well as incisive barbs -- with host Terry Gross.
Here are a few of her best lines:
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"I don't think it's that revealing, or it's certainly not offensive. It's not unkind about him. It's flattering. I mean, the way people are reacting to it is funny to me, too. I'd do him at 73." -- Fisher talking about her affair with "Star Wars" co-star Harrison Ford in her autobiography "The Princess Diarist"
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"I don't know, maybe eight years ago some guy said to me, I thought about you every day from when I was 12 to when I was 22. And I said every day? And he said, well, four times a day." -- on realizing she was the object of many young men's fantasies
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"I actually don't think there is that much of a downside. The downside is the hair. The downside is the hair and some of the outfits. But I like Princess Leia. I like how she handles things. I like how she treats people. I -- she tells the truth. She, you know, gets what she wants done. I don't have a real problem with Princess Leia. I've sort of melded with her over time." -- on playing Princess Leia
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"A giant, fat face like a sanddab with features." -- on her self-image when she played Princess Leia
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"No, I didn't. I wanted a relationship with him, and that was the one that was available so I took it." -- on not resenting becoming a caretaker to her father, who left the family when she was 2 to be with Elizabeth Taylor
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"It was the dialogue: 'I thought I recognized your foul stench when I arrived on board.' Say that like I just said it. It sounds weird. So it was very arch dialogue, so that's my excuse. And I'm living with it right now." -- on why her "Star Wars" accent sounded vaguely British
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"There are very few women from her generation who worked like that, who just kept a career going all her life and raised children and had horrible relationships and lost all her money and got it back again. I mean, she's had an amazing life, and she's someone to admire." -- on her mother, Debbie Reynolds
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"Oh, I think I do overshare, and I sometime marvel that I do it. But it's sort of -- in a way, it's my way of trying to understand myself. I don't know. I get it out of my head. It creates community when you talk about private things and you can find other people that have the same things. Otherwise, I don't know - I felt very lonely with some of the issues that I had or history that I had. And when I shared about it, I found that others had it, too." -- on oversharing
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"I've never seen my mother with bad manners until I saw her with the nurses. But they were telling her what to do, and no one tells my mother what to do. And so I had - I had to say at one point to my mother, when she was yelling at her nurse, Mom, not cool." -- on her mother's relationship with her nurses
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What she told Terry Gross about Harrison Ford, her mother, and the teenage boys who obsessed over Princess Leia
Almost exactly one month before she passed away, the quotable and lovable Carrie Fisher appeared on NPR's "Fresh Air," where she dispensed pearls of wisdom -- as well as incisive barbs -- with host Terry Gross.