George Lucas Pays Touching Tribute To Carrie Fisher

04/13/2017 02:55 pm EDT

The 40 Years of Star Wars panel at Star Wars Celebration 2017 Orlando highlighted several cast members' journeys with the saga which started over 40 years ago for many of them. Several of the stars and filmmakers who are involved with the current batch of films coming from Lucasfilm and Disney have been with the saga from its earliest days.

Late in 2016, one of those members of the Star Wars family was taken too soon when Carrie Fisher tragically passed away.

To conclude the first panel of Celebration on Thursday, the cast and crew of the Star Wars movie paid tribute to Fisher. Mastermind George Lucas started the touching moments off with a touching speech, remembering his time with the iconic actress.

"She was a princess. She was a senator. She played a part that was very smart and she was having to hold her own against two big lugs and goofballs who were screwing things up," Lucas said. "When I cast it, I said, 'I want somebody young to play the part.' When Carrie came in, she was that character. She was very smart....Very bold, very tough."

"There are not very many people like her. They're 1 in a billion. For this particular part, it was absolutely perfect because she could hold her own..." Lucas went on. "She wore a dress through the whole thing but she was the toughest one of the group. That's the key to Carrie playing that part. It was a hard to play and she pulled it off brilliantly."

"She was fun to be with. She kept the whole group going. She was very challening in terms of pointing out the certain pieces of dialogue were a little hard to say! She was brilliant and obvously we'll all miss her. She'll always be the princess whotook command and never backed down, never wa sin jeopardy, sh ewas always helping the other guys get out of the messes they created. We'll all love her forever and ever."

Fisher is set to appear in Star Wars: The Last Jedi, which hits theaters in December of 2017. The actress had wrapped her role in the film prior to her passing, putting her back on the screen with her Luke Skywalker actor Mark Hamill, once more.

MORE STAR WARS:

• George Lucas Reveals Why He Picked Mark Hamill
• First Look At Carrie Fisher In The Last Jedi
• Samuel L. Jackson Pitches Mace Windu's Return

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