Touching tributes to Carrie Fisher at Star Wars Celebration as Kathleen Kennedy confirms Leia WON’T be in Episode IX

We reported earlier this week that Carrie Fisher’s brother, Todd, had said the late actress – who had just finished playing Princess Leia in Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi – would also be seen in Episode IX.

However now, coming from Star Wars Celebration Orlando, it seems that this is simply not the case as Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy told the audience at the The Last Jedi panel: “We will see a lot of Carrie in eight.”

However, she went on: “Sadly, Carrie will not be in nine… but we will see a lot of Carrie in eight.”

According to what Fisher’s brother had said, it appears that perhaps plans had changed as they – he and Carrie’s daughter Billie Lourd – had given Disney/Lucasfilm permission to use Carrie in Episode IX: “Both of us were like, ‘Yes, how do you take her out of it?’ And the answer is, you don’t,” Todd had said.
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So much like her mother in so many ways- it was almost as if we were cuddling our Princess again! #BillieLourd #DejaVuAllOverAgain #SWCO pic.twitter.com/Rhb1siaYbj

— Mark Hamill (@HamillHimself) April 14, 2017

In related news, this year’s Celebration is very much in honour of Carrie. Mark Hamill, at a panel in her memory, gave a very heartfelt tribute to the actress: “I was just bowled over by her humor and her whit, how sardonic she was. How dark she was. Within 20 minutes, she was telling me personal stories about her mother and father that I wouldn’t’ have shared with you if I’d known you ten years,” he said.

“As attracted as I was to her, I thought, ‘I couldn’t handle her as a girlfriend.’ She’s too much. She’s what you would call a high-maintenance relationship.

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“Sometimes, you know, we sort of wanted to go in that direction. On the pretext of talking about kissing techniques. ‘Oh, I’m a pretty good kisser, you know.’ ‘Oh, I think I’m a better kisser.’ Cut to us making out of the text like a couple of horny teenagers,” Hamill said. “I’ll tell you what really cooled it was the fact that at some point we both started laughing. Believe me …. It kills your passion if someone’s laughing in your face. But I thought ‘we dodged a bullet there,’ because we had the fun without any of the responsibility.” 

Hamill admitted the audience that he misses Carrie every day: “Today is a day where it would be very easy to be consumed with grief. Let me tell you, when go to sleep at night there’s never a day so far where I don’t think of her. And when I think of her … she’s looking down from the celestial stratosphere with those big brown eyes, that sly smile on her face as she lovingly extends me the middle finger.

“She was OUR Princess, damn it, and the actress who played her blurred into one gorgeous, fiercely independent & ferociously funny, take-charge woman who took our collective breath away.” Hamill said.

Earlier at Celebration a touching tribute to Carrie was screened and also her daughter Billie Lourd, along with George Lucas and Kathleen Kennedy, paid tribute to her mother, to Princess Leia and to the fans that Carrie loved (check them both out below).

Carrie died in December last year.

Source: THR