“Carrie’s favorite possession was a giant Prozac pill that she bought many years ago. A big pill,” Todd explained. “She loved it, and it was in her house, and Billie and I felt it was where she’d want to be.”
I’ve always found it difficult to write about things like loss. If there’s no sarcasm to be found I default to news-mode about 90% of the time, and that’s probably being fairly generous with the percentages. So I asked for Jaders to send in their own thoughts and memories about Carrie Fisher – and Debbie Reynolds, who holds her own special place in Club Jade history.
Variety reports today that Woody Harrelson (The Hunger Games, Zombieland) is in talks to play a mentor figure to Alden Ehrenreich’s young Han Solo. Kathleen Kennedy said last month that they expect to begin filming in February.
Ehrenreich, Donald Glover and Emilia Clarke are the only confirmed cast members for film so far, which is being directed by Phil Lord and Chris Miller.
Recently, rumors have been swirling that the movie will be pushed back to December 13, 2018. It was originally announced for May 25, but after Rogue One’s success, I’d be very surprised if it doesn’t move. (Maintaining the May release date would likely butt it right into the home release promotional window for Episode VIII.) Lucasfilm has only been using the year in their most recent announcements.
Harrelson will next be seen in War of the Planet of the Apes.
There’s so much to say about Carrie Fisher, and so much out there that I can’t claim for this to be anywhere near comprehensive. But here are a few of my favorite tributes:
Like Fisher, Leia earned every tiny ounce of respect that came her way. She was given the title of princess because of who her parents were, but she earned the rank of general through hard and often miserable work. We love the mythos that heroes get where they are because they are special or chosen, and the people we hold up as icons reflect that. But the rebel army isn’t made up of Jedis—for the most part it’s just ordinary people united to fight for the same cause. And Leia, in spite of having once been royalty and maybe having some ability with the Force, is mostly as ordinary as any other soldier; she rose through the ranks not by manipulating the Force but by learning leadership skills and military tactics.
Simply put: Leia got to where she was by showing up and quietly learning to do the work.
[The Force Awakens] had just been released, and Carrie had quickly become everyone’s favourite part of the promotional tour. She shot down anyone who asked about her weight loss for the role and had recently asked, via Twitter, for everyone to stop debating whether or not she had aged well – as it hurt “all three of my feelings”.
Like everything Carrie said or did, that tweet revealed a truth – she told me she hated the way she looked in that film and suddenly, unexpectedly, she was in tears.
Minutes later she was in high spirits, plotting to tweet an old photo she had unearthed from the first set of Star Wars in which she was cupping C-3PO’s balls. “This is going to get me in trouble with the people at Disney,” she said, while I held the pic steady and she snapped, “but I don’t care.”
Most of my time with her involved me staring at her, wide-eyed and in blissful shock that one person could live a life so fully. We rode dog sleds in Canada, swam hot springs in Japan, pet koalas in Australia. That’s how she lived. Extraordinary. Brilliant. Hilarious.
You could always tell there was a real human being in there beneath the silly space hair — one with a sharp wit and an observer’s eye. She did not take fame seriously, and through her writings demystified it, often hilariously. She shared too, with warmth and courage, her experiences of loss and mental illness. Her life was an open book, and it was fantastically well-written.
When I’m on book tour I spend a lot of time with drivers who take me from airports to bookstores to hotels to new cities. They usually work for the book companies and they see all sorts of interesting people in their work so I always ask them, “Who is the best person you’ve ever driven?” and “Who is the worst?” I always promise not to share the worst but frankly there should be an entire book written by drivers who have seen entirely too much of the worst of people (because it is fascinating) but my favorite stories are always the ones about the best people. I’ve probably asked over 100 drivers who their favorite person they spent time with was and so far only a single person has been mentioned more than once…Carrie Fisher.
“I feel I’m very sane about how crazy I am,” Fisher wrote in “Wishful Drinking,” directly after describing “being invited” to go to a mental hospital. That was part of the charm of her writing: it would take you places you might not have wanted to go, and kept up a stream of chatter to help you remain, if not comfortable, at least comforted. Your friend Carrie Fisher was with you, even as she was observing herself.
Meanwhile, per an email sent out to attendees, 4-day passes to the con are almost sold out. Celebration 2017, the con’s third outing to Orlando, takes place April 13 to 16.
Carrie Fisher’s ashes were laid to rest in a giant Prozac pill. (You can see the pictures at Buzzfeed.) Her brother Todd explains to Entertainment Tonight:
→ A fun look at 
The Washington Post’s Alexandra Petri: 
