Carrie Fisher's sisters open up about her final moments

Tuesday, January 3, 2017
Carrie Fisher's sisters open up about her final moments
Carrie Fisher's sisters - Joely and Tricia - opened up about their final moments with Carrie and their happiest memories together.

LOS ANGELES -- Carrie Fisher's sisters - Joely and Tricia - opened up about their final moments with Carrie and their happiest memories together.

JOELY: I've been having an out-of-body experience. The world lost Carrie and Debbie, of course, but-- and-- and Princess Leia and we lost our hero. We lost-- our mirror."

TRICIA: We had the coolest big sister in the world. She was a badass, bawdy, gun-toting princess. I mean, who was that?

While Joely and Tricia were raised by mom Connie Stevens and Carrie raised by her mother, Debbie Reynolds, the three shared a father, singer Eddie Fisher.

JOELY: I do remember seeing her on - you know, in a 40-foot close-up and going, 'Wow, that's my sister.' I mean, on screen."

TRICIA: "That's actually how I found-- I-- I-- I really knew about her was Star Wars."

ABC's CHRIS CONNELLY: What did you know about her that maybe the rest of us did not?

JOELY: That-- I think she was more sensitive-

TRICIA: She was secretly soft. She was extremely generous. Like, you would walk in and she would just hand you something in her room.

JOELY: We laid on her floor one night and she said, "I have these diaries from Star Wars," and read them to me. That was a decade ago. I know she said she just found 'em. She wasn't telling the truth. (LAUGH)// So I feel like I got to be in on the joke a little bit and that is important to me.

A final conversation via text was filled with talk of family and loved ones.

JOELY: I texted with Carrie the night before she got on the plane. It was sort of out of the blue. We talked about age, 'cause she was floored that she had just turned 60. We talked about children, we talked about our frail mothers, and promised to see her for Christmas.

After learning of her heart attack on that flight to LA from London, it was a promise these two sisters would keep at Carrie's bedside in the hospital with Carrie's 24-year-old daughter, Billie Lourd.

TRICIA: Billie was handling everything. She's an amazing--

JOELY: Soulful--

TRICIA: Amazing girl.

JOELY: Smart. Yeah.

TRICIA: She was obviously, you know, rattled to her core. It was her mom. But she was handling it.

CHRIS: What did you want your sister to know as you sat in that room with her?

JOELY: I remember just holding her hand and telling her that we were there, that we would make sure that her daughter was whole, which she will be. And I sat with Debbie. And she said to me that she said she was praying for more time.

TRICIA: Yeah.

JOELY: And she kept saying that she was-- she wanted more time. And-- I knew-- I knew that if Carrie wasn't gonna survive this that Debbie would not. You knew it.

TRICIA: You could feel it.

JOELY: You could feel it in in her tiny little beautiful body. You could see it in her face. She would not last without her on the planet. She wouldn't. And she didn't.

Debbie Reynolds would die just a day after Carrie, whose passing leaves Joely and Tricia in sisterly grief and sweet remembrance.

TRICIA: I felt cooler and more interesting by being near her. I felt special by having her as a sister. It made me special.

CHRIS: When you wanna conjure up the happiest memory you can of Carrie, what does it look like?

JOELY: It's more like getting to have her one-on-one and not share her. That's what I, that's what I think of and that's what I will miss, is being able to just be with her in her home or wherever. And have her to myself. Sorry.