Source:
https://scmp.com/culture/books/article/2054394/review-carrie-fishers-memoir-hints-juicy-star-wars-gossip-fails
Culture/ Books

Review: Carrie Fisher’s memoir hints at juicy Star Wars gossip but fails to deliver

Book by Fisher, who rose to fame as Princess Leia in the Star Wars franchise, contains hazy recollections of an affair with Harrison Ford and excerpts from notes written during shooting that don’t reveal much

Carrie Fisher (left) and Harrison Ford play lovers in the original Star Wars trilogy. Fisher revealed recently the two had a fling in real life too.

 

The Princess Diarist

by Carrie Fisher

Blue Rider Press

2.5 stars

“I’ve spent so many years not telling the story of Harrison and me having an affair on the first Star Wars movie that it’s difficult to know exactly how to tell it now,” Carrie Fisher announces on page 49 of her brisk but vague new memoir, The Princess Diarist.

“Excellent, here we go,” any solid fan of the real Star Wars movies (certainly not the prequels) will think, settling in for the literary equivalent of an ice-cream sundae of the more offbeat flavours.

But Fisher, who accepts that she will be known as Princess Leia until the end of time, lets the reader down. Having waited 40 years to publish what one expects to be a dishy tell-all about the romance behind the iconic movie of a generation (that generation mournfully sandwiched between the baby boomers and millennials), the actress and writer only offers a few wisps of the goods.
Fisher in 2015.
Fisher in 2015.
Fisher blames her hazy recall of the behind-the-scenes affair with Harrison Ford on the potent marijuana they smoked on their lost weekends between scenes. She also decides that “with uncharacteristic reservation and scruples that I quash any details” of their first weekend together. Sex is private, she says.
Fisher and Ford had many intimate moments throughout he films.
Fisher and Ford had many intimate moments throughout he films.

No problem, but she also draws the curtain over the interesting bits: their chemistry, their conversations, her point-blank impressions of a man poised to become one of Hollywood’s biggest stars.

Or maybe we’re supposed to believe, as she insists, that Ford just didn’t talk a lot when they were together. In any case, we are left with a few interesting glimpses wrapped around excerpts of the diaries Fisher says she kept while shooting Star Wars and recently discovered. Even the diary bits are not very revealing, being the moody musings, including poetry, of a young woman on the cusp of 20 years old.

It’s clear from the final two chapters of the book, one of them titled “Leia’s Lap Dance,” that Fisher published this book with making money in mind. Her closing meditation on fame leaves Ford and the affair far behind. However, many Star Wars fans will read this book anyway or likely did so the instant it appeared.