Carrie Fisher‘s half sisters, Joely and Tricia Fisher, opened up about the late Star Wars actress and her mother, Debbie Reynolds, in a new interview with ABC News, which aired on Monday, January 2. Watch what they said in the clip above.
Carrie died at age 60, on December 27, four days after suffering a medical emergency on board a plane. One day later, Reynolds suffered an apparent stroke and passed away at age 84. (Carrie, Joely and Tricia share the same father, late singer Eddie Fisher.)
“[Debbie] kept saying that she was, she wanted more time. I knew that if Carrie wasn’t going to survive this, that Debbie would not. You knew it. You could see it in her face,” Joely, 49, said. “She would not last without [Carrie] on the planet.”
As previously reported, Carrie stopped breathing on a flight from London to L.A. Joely told ABC News that she was texting with the star just one day before she boarded the plane.
“We talked about age, ’cause she was floored that she had just turned 60,” the Ellen actress recalled. “We talked about children. We talked about our frail mothers, who now, we’ve lost Debbie.”
Joely and Tricia, 48, found out about Carrie’s heart attack from the media. “I was talking on the phone with Joely, and she said, she clicked over and came back and said, ‘TMZ just called me and, and some, something happened to Carrie,'” Tricia said. The two then rushed to the hospital, where they found Carrie’s daughter, Scream Queens actress Billie Lourd, handling everything.
“[Billie is] the most amazing accomplishment of her life, for sure,” Joely said.
Joely and Tricia remained by Carrie’s side in the days that followed. “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 then I told her she would love how high she was right now,” Joely said.
“I’ve been having an out-of-body experience. … we lost our hero,” she added. Tricia chimed in: “We had the coolest big sister in the world.”
Joely also paid tribute to Carrie in a guest column for The Hollywood Reporter, which was published on Monday.
“My sister would have wanted a dramatic exit; she just might have wished for another couple of decades before making one. She told me she wanted to see this political horror play out. She likely would have crafted a sharp, piercing novel about her nonconventional goings-on with this national nightmare as the backdrop,” Joely wrote. “But mostly, she would have wanted us to celebrate her life, her words, and for Billie to be whole. In time she will be. She is smart and soulful and magic.”
Joely vowed to be by Lourd’s side in the aftermath. “We will pick up the saber, use the force … whatever. We will honor these two magical people who have left the tribe in the way they lived, with grandeur and grace,” she wrote. “I want them back, but since I know that is not possible, I will soldier on. I have changed my shoes and will keep dancing to honor these magic people.”
