Billie Lourd Explains “Brutal” Experience of Grieving Carrie Fisher as a Public Figure

When Star Wars legend Carrie Fisher tragically passed away in 2016, her daughter Billie Lourd immediately had to experience the pain of losing her grandmother, Debbie Reynolds, only one day later. At the time, Lourd was only 24 and making a name for herself with roles like Chanel #3 in Scream Queens and appearing alongside her mother in Star Wars: The Force Awakens as Lieutenant Connix. In a recent interview with the New Day podcast, Lourd opened up about the “brutal” experience of mourning her mother and grandmother as a young public figure. 

“It was brutal. It was really, really brutal, and I still hesitate and stutter because it’s really hard for me,” Lourd explained. “Because everything I say gets turned into some headline that I didn’t mean. There’s this one where I said something, and it was like three months after she died. I didn’t know what the f*ck I was talking about or who the f*ck I was or what was going on. And I said something like, ‘Well, now that they’re gone, I get to just be Billie.’”

“I meant what we were talking about earlier. It’s like I got out of the shadow of them, but I didn’t want to get out of this shadow. It sounded like I like wanted them to die, and that is absolutely the opposite of what I wanted. I would do anything to get them back, but it sounded like I was excited to have the ‘Billie Show,’” she explained. “Sometimes in interviews, things get pulled out and it comes across as I didn’t care about them and that’s just not the case. They’re my favorite people in the world. I miss my mom every day and my grandma, but really, my mom the most … She was the greatest, funniest person ever. She was my best f*cking friend ever. There’s no one who will ever be as funny as she is. She was just – she is amazing.”

“When they were alive, I feel like I really tried to avoid doing things in their shadow,” Lourd continued. “We got offered all these random photoshoots and all this weird stuff that happens in my life, but I didn’t want to do them when they were alive because I wanted to make sure that people knew me separately from them.” She added, “Now I wish I could run back and do all of those photoshoots and do anything with them, really,” she explained. “But I guess I just tried to separate myself from them while they were alive and now I feel like I kind of I am kind of trying to do the opposite. I try to connect myself to them because I miss them.”

You can currently watch Billie Lourd in the new season of American Horror Story.