In the wake of Carrie Fisher’s unexpected death at age 60, her new memoir, The Princess Diarist, is an unexpectedly emotional read. But the emotions aren’t grief and nostalgia so much as alarm and sympathy. Early in the book, she tells a thoroughly appalling story that she presents as a cheery little romp. In London for the filming of 1977’s Star Wars: A New Hope, Fisher attends George Lucas’ birthday party, where she’s “essentially the only girl” in a room full of hard-drinking crew who are loudly whinging that they’d rather shoot in “a nice remote location… where there’s no bloody shortage of strange but friendly quim.”
At the time, Fisher is 19, and by her own admission, naïve and agonizingly insecure. So when the crew members briefly stop teasing her (“here’s our little princess without her buns”) and decide to get her drunk, she quickly caves, even though she hates the taste and effects of alcohol. “It makes me stupid, sick, and unconscious really fast,” she admits. “I’ve never actually been drunk—just senseless and inert.” But she wants to fit in. A couple of drinks later, she’s reeling and incoherent, at which point several men surround her and try to hustle her out of the party, “to wherever movie crews take young actresses when they want to establish that the actress belongs to them.”
Then Harrison Ford steps in, in what sounds like a real-life version of a movie scene: “Pardon me,” he tells a crew member who claims Fisher wants to get a little air, “but the lady doesn’t seem to be very aware of what she wants.” An argument breaks out, and Ford yanks Fisher away from the party and into a car — and starts making out with her. He is married and has two kids. He is 14 years older than her. She is drunk, and he just finished saying she isn’t aware enough to make rational decisions. And that’s how their affair starts: the affair everyone wrote about with a frisson of pop culture glee when The Princess Diarist came out a few weeks ago. The real-life Princess Leia and Han Solo, at the height of their youthful hotness and iconic movie star familiarity, got it on while shooting Star Wars, then kept it secret for nearly 40 years! What a story!
I think what really makes this frustrating is, we all know so many Good Men who’ve done shit like this. Who’ve been sexual with a woman, a girl, who’s clearly not able to consent under those circumstances.
Hell, a lot of us have gad it happen to us! But there’s this huge cultural narrative supporting it, saying it’s no big deal… that it’s hard for us to convince ourselves that it’s wrong. Because it just seems so damn normal.
It’s not normal. It’s not normal.
Carrie Fisher’s final Harrison Ford story isn’t romantic, it’s just tragic
Key and Teeth 