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“The character of Leia is really, in a way, the heart of this story. When we were talking about this story we realized we could not possibly tell the end of these nine films without Leia,” Abrams said. The actor passed away before filming began, but Abrams still had some unused footage of Fisher from The Force Awakens, “that we realized we could use in a new way so Carrie, as Leia, gets to be in the film.” But here’s where the story takes a turn. “I wasn’t supposed to be here,” Abrams said, as he wasn’t originally intended to direct the first and last installments in the sequel trilogy. But before her death, Fisher wrote a prescient dedication into her book The Princess Diarist. “She was almost sort of supernaturally witty and magical in a way,” Abrams said. On the pages she had written, “‘And special thanks to J.J. Abrams for putting up with me twice.’ Now, I had never worked with her before The Force Awakens and I wasn’t supposed to do this movie, so it was a classic Carrie thing to sort of write something like that and it could only mean one thing for me. And I could not be more excited to have you see her in her final performance.”
