Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker director JJ Abrams reveals how Carrie Fisher’s death shaped new film

Lucasfilm had previously stated that CGI would not be used and the role would not be recast

Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker director JJ Abrams has opened up about Carrie Fisher‘s role in the film.

In Vanity Fair‘s coverage of the film, Abrams spoke about the difficult choices he had to make as ​a filmmaker when it came to Leia’s character, following the actor’s death in 2016.

Lucasfilm had previously stated that CGI would not be used and the role would not be recast, with Abrams later confirming that unused footage of Fisher from 2015’s Star Wars: The Force Awakens would be used instead.

“It’s hard to even talk about it without sounding like I’m being some kind of cosmic spiritual goofball,” the director said of the footage, “but it felt like we suddenly had found the impossible answer to the impossible question.”

He then revealed that specific scenes were written around the footage in order to place Leia’s dialogue into new contexts, with Abrams using lighting in the new scenes that matched the way Fisher had been lit.

“It was a bizarre kind of left side/right side of the brain sort of Venn diagram thing, of figuring out how to create the puzzle based on the pieces we had,” he added.

Fisher’s daughter Billie Lourd, who appears in the new Star Wars trilogy as Lieutenant Connix, was at first deliberately written out of the scenes as Abrams believed it might be too painful for her. Lourd instead said she wanted to be included in those scenes.

“And so, there are moments where they’re talking; there are moments where they’re touching,” Abrams said. “There are moments in this movie where Carrie is there, and I really do feel there is an element of the uncanny, spiritual, you know, classic Carrie, that it would have happened this way, because somehow it worked. And I never thought it would.”

Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker is released in UK cinemas on 19 December.