Carrie Fisher Performs 'Wishful Drinking' This Weekend at SOPAC

For many of us baby boomers, it's hard to dislodge the image of Carrie Fisher, at 19, playing the part of the poker-faced Princess Leia in George Lucas's original Star Wars trilogy, gleaming braids rolled up around her ears. For decades, her famously coiffed head has been imprinted on everything from T-shirts to Pez dispensers—not to mention the actress's psyche.

Since that role, Fisher, now 52, has appeared in dozens of other films, been a mother, a screenwriter, a bestselling author of several semi-autobiographical novels, one of which, "Postcards from the Edge," was adapted into a hit movie starring Meryl Streep and Shirley MacLain. But when my kids asked where I was going when I disappeared into my office recently to speak to Fisher about her one-woman show this weekend at SOPAC, I reflexively said, "I've got to talk to Princess Leia." (For an hour or so, in their eyes, I was cool.)

If Fisher's past has been a burden to her, it's also made her a household name and given her an incomparable view into the inner workings of Hollywood—which she has used as a kind of diving bell for exploring and reporting on her own inner life. She is, as most everyone knows, the child of the actress Debbie Reynolds and singer Eddie Fisher, who famously left his wife and family to marry the newly widowed Elizabeth Taylor in the late 1950s.

Just this much might give someone fodder to fill a volume or two, but Fisher also worked her whole life in the fishbowl of Hollywood, had a long and bumpy romantic relationship with the singer-songwriter Paul Simon, struggled on and off with alcoholism and prescription drug addiction, and was diagnosed with manic depression for which she is still medicated. "Wishful Drinking," which was a performance before it was a bestselling memoir, is Fisher's intimate, take-no-prisoners account of an extraordinary life that is stranger than most fiction. As a New York Times reviewer put it, "Barefoot in pajamas and a robe, lounging in a kitsch-filled sanctum-in-outer-space… Ms. Fisher makes you feel you've arrived for a slumber party to swap confidences."

"It's more funny than sad," Fisher insists of the show. "People should come to the evening ready to laugh." And identify with her, apparently. Through its many sold-out performances, including on Broadway at Studio 54 last fall, audience members have approached Fisher after the show with their own stories of broken homes, addictions and mental illness.   

Fisher considers herself first and foremost a writer. "It's what I spend most of my time doing. The more control I have in my work, the more satisfied I am. When I write, I feel as if I'm totally in control." There's also a therapeutic aspect to her writing—literally. "Manic depression can sometimes lead to something called pressured speech. I find that writing can alleviate that."

As a child, Fisher says, she was surrounded by performers but didn't like it much herself. She turned to writing early on. "I wrote compulsively, usually in journals, and found a lot of solace and creativity in it. I also read compulsively." Today she still uses reading as an escape and a form of relaxation—Bruce Wagner and David Sedaris are among her favorite authors. She is already working on a new book, "The Best Awful."

She is surprised at the "legs" "Wishful Drinking" has had—first as a live show, then as a book, and soon as an HBO broadcast. In fact, this weekend's SOPAC performances will be taped for use in the feature-length documentary airing this fall.

Besides being a critical and commercial success, it's work she feels proud of. "It's being able to combine the performing with the writing that I find rewarding. Getting up on stage, out there by myself, declaring things that others would find uncomfortable or shameful." And making others laugh while she's at it.     

Wishful Drinking, created and written by Carrie Fisher, directed by Tony Taccone. Friday, June 25 at 8 pm and Saturday, June 26 at 2 pm and 8 pm. SOPAC, One SOPAC Way, South Orange, NJ. For more information or to order tickets, call 973-313-2787 or go to www.sopacnow.org.