Billie Lourd Opens Up About Losing Carrie Fisher & Debbie Reynolds
The world mourned alongside Billie Lourd when the actress lost her mom, Carrie Fisher, and grandmother, Debbie Reynolds, in just two days. In a new interview with Town & Country, Billie spoke to her American Horror Story co-star Sarah Paulson about life after the loss.
“I’ve always kind of lived in their shadows, and now is the first time in my life when I get to own my life and stand on my own,” Billie said. “I love being my mother’s daughter, and it’s something I always will be, but now I get to be just Billie. It’s a lot of pressure, because she had such an incredible legacy, and now I have to uphold that and make it evolve in my own way.”
Billie appeared with Carrie in Star Wars: The Force Awakens. “[On set] my mother would pull me aside and be like, ‘It’s weird that you’re so comfortable here. This is the most uncomfortable environment in the world. If you’re comfortable here, you should do this.’”
She continued: “If life’s not funny, then it’s just true – and that would be unacceptable,” she said. “Even when she [Carrie] died, that was what got me through that whole thing. When Debbie died the next day, I could just picture her saying, ‘Well, she’s upstaging me once again, of course – she had to.’”