In 2016, the world lost a beloved megastar in the form of Carrie Fisher, who’s gone down in history as the only Princess Leia from the original Star Wars trilogy. Fisher’s death was unexpected, and it struck in the middle of the rebooted sequel trilogy, where she reprised her role as General Leia Organa, the leader of the Rebellion. Millions of fans around the world mourned her death, but it was ultimately reported as sudden cardiac arrest – and a tragic loss. But now, nearly eight years after Carrie Fisher’s death, her close friend James Blunt is suggesting that the true reason behind her death might have been more sinister than everyone thought.
Everyone knows Carrie Fisher from Star Wars, where she’s Princess-turned-General Leia Organa, the headstrong, blaster-wielding leader of the rebellion. Leia was known for taking no prisoners, and that attitude carried over to Carrie Fisher in the form of brutal honesty about the beauty standards she was forced to uphold. In an interview on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert from barely a month before her death, Carrie Fisher spoke on how Hollywood was constantly asking her to lose weight.
“They always do [ask me to lose weight]. They want to hire part of me, not all of me. They want to hire about three-fourths, so I have to get rid of the fourth somehow. The fourth can’t be with me.”
Carrie Fisher
While her comment took on a lighthearted tone and wrapped with a joke, new evidence from Fisher’s close friend James Blunt is highlighting the fact that she had a real problem with weight loss, and her need to bend to Hollywood‘s whims might have been the final nail in her coffin.
James Blunt Says Carrie Fisher “Effectively Killed Herself” Using Drugs to be Thin
Singer-songwriter James Blunt was extremely close friends with Carrie Fisher up until her death in December of 2016. Blunt has confirmed he was with his friend the day before she died, and he’s been using his position as an inside source to reveal some uncomfortable truths regarding how much pressure Fisher was under as she struggled to fit back into the role of Leia Organa in the months leading up to her death. He told The Independent that while Fisher was “on a high” from getting her Star Wars role back for The Force Awakens, that just increased the pressure she was under at the time.
“…She was really on a high and a positive, but they had applied a lot of pressure on her to be thin. She spoke about the difficulties that women have in the industry, how men are allowed to grow old, and women are certainly not in film and TV…And she really put a lot of pressure on herself, started using drugs again and by the time she got on the plane, she had effectively killed herself.”
James Blunt via The Independent
The day after James Blunt saw her for the last time, Carrie Fisher boarded a flight to Los Angeles and suffered what the autopsy report would later call “sudden cardiac arrest”. She remained on life support for four days after the plane landed in LA, but she eventually died, aged 60. The official coroner’s report attributed her death to “sleep apnea and other factors”, per The Guardian, but Blunt is remaining firm that it was her drug problem that did her in.
Fans of Carrie Fisher’s will recall that she was open and honest about the drugs she was taking. Following her death, her family confirmed that the drugs were prescribed to treat her bipolar disorder, but James Blunt says that Fisher, at the time of her death, was on enough drugs “to have a really good party.”
So the question remains – what killed Carrie Fisher? Was it cardiac arrest, like the doctor said? Was it the pressure from Hollywood executives over Star Wars, like James Blunt said? Was it drugs, and if it was, were they the ones she was prescribed or something more nefarious? Unfortunately, with Carrie Fisher dead and unable to talk to us in the form of a Force ghost, it’s impossible to say for sure, though speculation will always exist.
