Billie Lourd has given her first interview since she suffered not one, but two unimaginable losses in the span of just over 24 hours last December.
First, the young actress said goodbye to her mother, beloved Star Wars icon Carrie Fisher.
Then, the very next day, Lourd’s grandmother (and Fisher’s mother), Debbie Reynolds, also passed away.
Lourd, best known in the entertainment world for her role on Scream Queens, has commented here and there about the tragic deaths via her Instagram page.
But she opens up in major detail for the first time in this Q&A with Town & Country.
Speaking to American Horror Story star Sarah Paulson for the latest issue’s cover story, Lourd contrasts life with her organized father against that of her famously chaotic mother.
“He gets home at the same time every day, and we eat dinner together, we do homework together, we watch Extreme Makeover: Home Edition and cry, and then go to sleep,” Lourd explained of living with her dad.
“At Mom’s it was like, ‘Let’s put Christmas lights in the palm trees at 2 a.m.’
“Do you remember when Sharper Image was 24 hours? We went there all the time, 1 a.m. or 3 a.m., just picking up little trinkets… as if that was what you do!”
Both Fisher and Reynolds became household names in the entertainment industry, but Lourd says neither wanted her to follow in their acting footsteps.
“I think in a normal family they would have looked at me and been like, ‘Hey, this kid’s a performer.’ But I was so scared. I was embarrassed, honestly,” she tells the publication, adding:
“Because they were like, ‘This is going to be a really s–tty lifestyle, and everyone’s going to be scrutinizing you deeply and constantly.’
“My mom wrote five books and a one-woman show; they didn’t want more things for people to be able to Google about me.”
Fisher was known for being outspoken. At absolutely all times.
Lourd says she was initially turned off by just how honest and raw her mother was – on stage, writing in books or when speaking to reporters – but she eventually came to admire it.
Now, Billie says she wants to emuluate Fisher.
“Looking back and watching her interviews, I try to model what I do after her. 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."”
Billie says she surprised everyone (including herself) with how comfortable she felt on the set of her first film, Star Wars: The Force Awakens – and her family quickly became supportive of her burgeoning career at this small role.
“Debbie was still encouraging me to put an act together. Literally three days before she died, she was like, ‘What numbers are you going to put in your act? Who are you going to impersonate?’
“I said, ‘I don’t think people do acts as much anymore,"”
“And she came back, ‘That’s why if you do one you’ll be more successful than anyone else. The act is a dying art, and someone needs to revive it.”
Elsewhere, Lourd says she’s keeping her mother’s compound (“It’s so magical.”) and that she relied on humor to get her through the hardest week of her life:
“If life’s not funny, then it’s just true – and that would be unacceptable,” she says, quoting her mom.
“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.”
Billie, of course, would give anything to have her loved ones alive and back in her life.
But there’s an opportunity now for her to become more independent.
“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,” she says.”
“I love being my mother’s daughter, and it’s something I always will be, but now I get to be just Billie.”
When was the last time she saw her mom alive? What does she think her mother would say to her now?
“The last time I saw her in person, this episode of Scream Queens was on, and it was a big episode for me.
“I had tons of scenes, and I was so hard on myself about it – I hated how I looked, hated my performance. I was really frustrated. She told me, ‘Come over right now. I want to watch this with you.’
“And she made me sit down and watch it, and she forced me to see the good parts. She was incredible like that.
“But she was really hard on me, saying, ‘Shut up. You’re great in this. Have faith in yourself. Be more confident."”
In conclusion, Lourd is in as much awe of her late mother’s honesty as any Star Wars fan out there.
“It’s good to be authentic, to help other people, but if it’s not helping other people, then don’t do it.
“There were a couple incidents I wish she could have kept to herself. But, you know, that was the beauty of her.”