Star Wars brought back the late Carrie Fisher as the iconic Princess Leia. But there were a few incidences that occurred while filming the anticipated sequel where Fisher felt she embarrassed herself.
Carrie Fisher thought this was the worst day she’s ever had on a film set
Fisher admitted to being a bit anxious when reprising her role as Princess Leia in The Force Awakens. The actor hadn’t portrayed the character since Return of the Jedi, and she felt pressure having to do the role justice decades later. This led to Fisher making a few errors while revisiting Leia.
“I’m the custodian of Princess Leia, so it’s my job to kind of protect her. It’s my whole life, so I was very nervous. The first day I had was this massive scene. I was scared that I would make mistakes, and I made mistakes,” Fisher once said in the documentary Secrets of The Force Awakens: A Cinematic Journey (via Yahoo).
The actor began to stress over flubbing a few lines in the feature.
“It was basically the worst day I ever had on a film set in my life,” Fisher said. “It ended, and I got to go to sleep and come in another day, and it was better.”
The film’s director, J.J. Abrams, contributed the mistakes she made to rust.
“She hadn’t acted in a while, and I think she was nervous going into this,” Abrams said. “Once we started to do it, she seemed to fall into it very easily. To bring a character to life that you hadn’t played in 30-some years … I understand for all of them how daunting that could be.”
Carrie Fisher thought ‘Star Wars: The Force Awakens’ was cursed
A few mishaps occurred while Fisher was filming The Force Awakens. Ford was famously involved in a plane crash around that time. But shortly after that, Fisher experienced her own accident, although not as severe as Ford’s.
“I’m about to call Mark Hamill to make sure he’s Ok. I have a horrid feeling there’s a curse going on here… What is funny is that last Sunday it was raining hard in L.A. I was driving to the art store and I got into an accident. It wasn’t that serious and I wasn’t hurt but it’s the first car accident I’ve ever had. I drove home and that’s when the wheel came off my BMW,” she once said according to Contact Music.
Fisher left the accident without a scratch, but she was warned at the time that it could’ve been a lot more serious.
“My assistant told me I could have died if the wheel had come off when I was on the freeway. Then I was watching the news and saw Harrison had his crash. I’m a bit worried it’s the curse of Star Wars,” she said.
While Ford was recovering from his plane crash, Fisher gifted her co-star a beer, which represented an inside joke between the two.
“[One time] he said, ‘Look, do you want to fly or can we have a beer?’ He wouldn’t have a drink if we were going to fly. It became something of a joke between us that I chose to have a beer that time rather than fly. I sent him some beers to the hospital with the message, ‘You should have had a beer this time,’” Fisher recalled.
Carrie Fisher felt pressured to lose weight for the film
Fisher took issue with being pressured into changing her physique for the feature. The actor lost 35 pounds at the request of the film’s studio, which demonstrated the part of the movie industry she wasn’t fond of.
“They don’t want to hire all of me – only about three-quarters,” Fisher said in an interview with Good Housekeeping. “Nothing changes, it’s an appearance-driven thing. I’m in a business where the only thing that matters is weight and appearance. That is so messed up. They might as well say get younger, because that’s how easy it is.”
Apart from that, Fisher confessed that the weight change made her feel worse on the inside.
“When I do lose the weight, I don’t like that it makes me feel good about myself. It’s not who I am. My problem is they talk to me like an actress but I hear them like a writer…We treat beauty like an accomplishment and that is insane,” she said.
