When legendary actress/author Carrie Fisher revealed that at the age of 19 she had an affair with a 33-year-old (and married) Harrison Ford on the set of the original Star Wars, I doubt any of us were all that shocked. Part of the reason being was because in the original Star Wars trilogy, the chemistry between Princess Leia and Han Solo was real and palpable. No wonder she wrote a bunch of sad teen poetry about it!
While our grandparents might have had Scarlet and Rhett in Gone With The Wind, Leia and Han was the epic screen romance for the modern era. To find out that romance had a basis in reality feels like information we all kind of instinctively knew. The revelation of the affair is part of Fisher’s newest book, The Princess Diarist, where the author writes about her own love/hate relationship with the sci-fi character that made her a feminist icon to generations of fans. And while the character of Leia Organa was this mature woman and a leader of armies, the reality was she was being played by a teenager with a crush on a sexy older man.
And what do teenage girls do usually do when in the midst of romantic angst? Poetry, baby! And Carrie Fisher sure wrote some lovelorn poems during the making of Star Wars, which (thanks to Vulture) can now be shared with everyone. There may have been years of Leia/Han fan fiction written out of the on-screen romance of the two characters, but the truth of the relationship is a hell of a lot more relatable than some cheesy “Fifty Shades of Wookiee” story found online. Here’s one sample:
Don’t offer me love
I seek disinterest and denial
Tenderness makes my skin crawl
Understanding is vile
When you offer me happiness
You offer too much
My ideal is a long-lasting longing
For someone whom I cannot touch.
Ok, that right there is actually totally worthy of Angela on My So-Called Life. I can almost see Carrie Fisher, still in Leia drag after a long day of filming, cinnamon bun rolls still on her head, smoking a cigarette in some British coffee house while writing all this down.
All snark aside, it’s really not bad, and you can see how this young actress found greater fame as a wordsmith in her adult years, both as an author and as a script doctor. Here’s one more Fisher poem from her time on Star Wars that’s brief and to the point, but I’m sure resonates with as many women today as it did back in 1977:
A woman’s place is in the home
Seated by the telephone
Men sow their wild oats
And women are sown.
And that right there, is one Carrie Fisher dropping the mic. Fisher’s new book The Princess Diarist is out now, and of course, we will see her as Leia Organa once more in Star Wars: Episode VIII, coming out next year.
Are you looking forward to all the behind the scenes stories on the making of Star Wars from Fisher’s new book? Let us know down below in the comments.
Image: Lucasfilm
