Billie Lourd Explains Why Carrie Fisher's Siblings Weren't Invited To The Star Wars Actress' Hollywood Walk Of Fame Ceremony
Billie Lourd will be celebrating Star Wars Day this year by accepting her mother Carrie Fisher’s posthumous star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, over six years after the legendary actress died at the age of 60. Ahead of the event set to take place on May the 4th in Hollywood, California, Lourd has issued a statement explaining the honest reason behind Carrie Fisher’s three siblings not being invited to attend the dedication.
Earlier this week, Carrie Fisher’s brother, Todd Fisher, shared with TMZ that he was “intentionally omitted” from attending the late Carrie Fisher’s Hollywood Walk of Fame celebration. Then, on Wednesday morning, Fisher’s two sisters, Joely and Tricia Leigh Fisher, jointly shared on Instagram that their niece had “chosen not to include” them for “some bizarre, misguided reason.” Following these developments, Billie Lourd issued a statement, sharing her reasoning. As she explained:
Days after my mom died, her brother and her sister chose to process their grief publicly and capitalize on my mother’s death, by doing multiple interviews and selling individual books for a lot of money, with my mom and my grandmother’s deaths as the subject. I found out they had done this through the press. They never consulted me or considered how this would affect our relationship. Though I recognize they have every right to do whatever they choose, their actions were very hurtful to me at the most difficult time in my life. I chose to and still choose to deal with her loss in a much different way.
In the statement (via The Hollywood Reporter), Billie Lourd shared that she decided to write the statement only because her aunts and uncle “publicly attacked” her and felt she needed to “publicly respond.” As Lourd shared, she is the one who didn’t invite them to the Hollywood Walk of Fame ceremony, and “they know why.”
Billie Lourd lost both her mother, Carrie Fisher, and her grandmother, Debbie Reynolds, in just two days. Fisher died on Dec. 27, 2016 at the UCLA Medical Center four days after experiencing a medical emergency while she was on a flight from London to Los Angeles during her book tour. Then on Dec. 28, 2016, Reynolds died at the age of 84 in Los Angeles.
In 2017, Joely Fisher published the memoir Growing Up Fisher: Musings, Memories and Misadventures, and in summer 2018, Todd Fisher published a memoir about his sister and mother called My Girls: A Lifetime with Carrie and Debbie. Lourd also continued with these words:
The press release Todd Fisher gave to TMZ and the posting Joely Fisher placed on Instagram, once again confirms that my instincts were right. To be clear — there is no feud. We have no relationship. This was a conscious decision on my part to break a cycle with a way of life I want no part of for myself or my children.
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Billie Lourd has greatly kept her personal life private, though she has spoken about the impact her late mother has had on her a handful of times following her death. In a 2022 interview, ahead of her role in the rom-com Ticket to Paradise, she called Fisher “the funniest woman of all time,” and during the Star Wars’ actress’ recent birthday, she opened up about her grief to remind others they are “not alone.”
Since Carrie Fisher’s death, Billie Lourd has had two children with Austen Rydell, whom she married in 2022 and where she honored her late mother. As Lourd explained, she has “no relationship” with her mother's siblings, and given how they dealt with her death, she was uncomfortable with inviting them to this event. Carrie Fisher’s Hollywood Walk of Fame ceremony will be streamed live on the Walk of Fame website while it happens on Thursday, May 4 at 11:30 a.m. PT.
