SPOILERS for STAR WARS: THE RISE OF SKYWALKER. Consider yourself warned. Following Carrie Fisher's tragic death prior to the release of STAR WARS: THE LAST JEDI, it was assumed that the film would be the last we saw of our Princess, but J.J. Abrams revealed that General Leia would still have a part to play in STAR WARS: THE RISE OF SKYWALKER. "We desperately loved Carrie Fisher," director J.J. Abrams said. "Finding a truly satisfying conclusion to the Skywalker saga without her eluded us. We were never going to recast, or use a CG character. With the support and blessing from her daughter, Billie, we have found a way to honor Carrie’s legacy and role as Leia in [The Rise of Skywalker] by using unseen footage we shot together in Episode VII."
While we may not have gotten quite as much of Leia as we might have had Carrie Fisher lived, it was still wonderful, albeit bittersweet, to see her on the big-screen once more. While speaking with THR, STAR WARS: THE RISE OF SKYWALKER co-writer Chris Terrio dropped a few details on where all the Leia footage came from, which included a lot of cobbled together audio tracks from across the franchise as well as footage from RETURN OF THE JEDI for the flashback sequence which saw Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) training Leia as a Jedi.
As far as the audio goes, every word that she says in the movie she’s said as Leia in Star Wars. I’d have to talk to Skywalker Sound about which bits were usable exactly as they were and which bits were cobbled together with different audio tracks. We had all the audio that Leia says at our disposal, and of course, every word that she says on camera is really Carrie. We also had access to the dailies from the original trilogy, and in the flashback of Luke and Leia, that image of Carrie comes from Return of the Jedi. So, we had access to everything in the archive, which turned out to be super helpful.
"So, yeah, the original trilogy was on our table for the flashback and for audio," Terrio continued. "That said, Leia was a very different person in the new trilogy, and I’m not sure that we would’ve used any audio from the original trilogy. Her voice had changed, and obviously, she was older, wiser and had a different quality to her performance. So, I’m not sure we ended up using any audio from the original trilogy, and we tried to stay true to Carrie’s acting intentions as much as we could." STAR WARS: THE RISE OF SKYWALKER is now playing in theaters, so be sure to check out a review from our own Matt Rooney and let us know what you thought of the film as well!