Billie Lourd Reflects on Life Advice, Humor From Mother Carrie Fisher
Billie Lourd opened up about the sudden loss of her mother Carrie Fisher and grandmother, Debbie Reynolds, for the first time in the new cover story for Town & Country.
“Now, looking back and watching her interviews, I try to model what I do after her,” Lourd said speaking of her mother’s remarkable honesty. “She was so good at it. She would get so annoyed with me if I ever did a fake interview. She’d say, ‘Tell the real story.'”
Like her mother, Lourd was raised with famous parents. But according to Lourd, Fisher, who famously chronicled the trials growing up in the shadow of her celebrity parents in her movie, Postcards from the Edge, was adamant about raising a a well-adjusted child.
“I remember a time when I was nine years old. I got in trouble in school for stealing something out of someone’s backpack, and she picked me up and she sat me down in the car,” Lourd said. “And she turned to me and said, ‘Are you going to grow up to be an asshole?’ And I started crying. She talked to me like an adult my whole life. I always think that now: I don’t want to grow up to be an asshole!”
Lourd also spoke about how Fisher’s humor helped her cope in the last several months. “If life’s not funny, then it’s just true – and that would be unacceptable,” she said, remembering Fisher’s advice to always find humor even in dark times. “Even when she 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.’
“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,” Lourd said. “I love being my mother’s daughter, and it’s something I always will be, but now I get to be just Billie.”
Currently, Lourd has a recurring role on American Horror Story and parts in upcoming films Billionaire Boys Club and Star Wars: The Last Jedi.