Todd Fisher: Debbie Reynolds Asked ‘Permission to Leave’ After Carrie’s Death
Three days before the public memorial for Debbie Reynolds and her daughter Carrie Fisher, who died within a day of each other in December, Todd Fisher opened up about the tragic loss of his mother and sister in an exclusive interview with Entertainment Tonight.
In a clip from his ET interview with Nancy O’Dell, which airs on Wednesday, Fisher discussed a conversation he had with his mother on the night Carrie died. “It looked like she asked permission to leave, told me she was going to leave, told me she loved me, closed her eyes and went to sleep,” the producer said.
“My mother said to me, the night that Carrie died, I didn’t know what was happening, but she was setting me up for her leaving the planet,” he recalled in the clip. “She literally looked at me and said I wanna go be with Carrie.”
He added that during their conversation where his mother asked his permission to go, she also went over some of her wishes should she pass. “And she starts running back through her estate, which we had done many times. [She’s like] ‘You’re going to take my dog and, you know, all these little instructions.’ And [she] even [went through] last-minute changes due to the fact that Carrie left first, as far as the memorial service.”
While he told ET that he’s “a little disoriented” but “doing fine” nearly three months after their deaths, he continues to grapple with the loss of his sister. “I’m really OK with Debbie’s exit, not so OK with Carrie’s exit,” he said. “‘Cause Carrie was in the middle of what was, I thought, her finest hours. Her creativity was peaking, the Star Wars thing was obviously back in spades. Everything that she was doing was turning to gold.”
The interview airs on ET on Wednesday. The public memorial service for Debbie Reynolds and Carrie Fisher takes place on March 25th at the Forest Lawn Hollywood Hills’ Freedom Theater at 1 p.m. PT. A live stream from the service will be available via DebbieReynolds.com.