Noted rebel Carrie Fisher recently fired a targeted truth bomb directly into the exposed exhaust port of the pop-cultural landscape, revealing that she and a then-married Harrison Ford had had an affair during the filming of Star Wars. Now, Fisher is talking about Ford’s reaction—or lack thereof—to her giving him an advance copy of her memoir The Princess Diarist, telling Fresh Air’s Terry Gross that he never responded to the overture, and that “I can’t imagine that he was comfortable with everything that was in it.”
Fisher made the initial announcement back in mid-November, but not before letting Ford know in person that it was coming. “I said, ‘I found the journals that I kept during the first movie, and I’m probably going to publish them,’” she told Gross. “And he just sort of raised his finger and said, ‘Lawyer!’ And then I said, ‘No, I won’t write anything that you don’t want. I mean, I’ll show it to you before and you can take anything out that you want taken out. I don’t want to make you uncomfortable,’ which I, of course, have. Unduly uncomfortable.”
Ford was 33 when the pair filmed Star Wars together, while Fisher was just 19. The actress attributed at least part of their on-screen chemistry to their intimacy with each other, noting, “I think it made me more able to wisecrack to him, even if I was insecure. We were having an affair, so there was something to base some security on.” Fisher also expressed some ambiguity, and possible reticence, about the high-profile romantic reveal, and its impact on her and her long-time co-star. “I wouldn’t have ambushed him like that, but it’s still—no matter if I told him or not, it probably feels like an ambush. It feels like an ambush to me, and I’m the one that wrote it.”