Carrie Fisher was heartbroken after losing her and Paul Simon’s child in a severe ectopic pregnancy that marked the end of their marriage, a new book obtained by DailyMail.com reveals.
Simon appeared angered at the failed pregnancy and didn’t visit Fisher at all during her two weeks in the hospital following a painful surgery around early 1984, writes Sheila Weller in her book Carrie Fisher: A Life on the Edge, available November 12.
An ectopic pregnancy is when a fertilized egg implants and grows outside the uterus, potentially damaging nearby organs and could lead to death due to the growing issue causing life-threatening bleeding.
For Fisher, losing the baby was one of her greatest heartbreaks and ‘was devastating to her.’
Weller writes: ‘Paul was very cold to her during this time. He seemed distracted and not thinking of her. She considered what she’d had as a ”near death experience”. She said Paul was not only unmoved by [what she went through]; he actually appeared to be angry with her about it.
‘This is when Carrie knew the marriage to Paul was over.’
The biography also delves deeper into Fisher’s three-month affair with her Star Wars co-star Harrison Ford, revealing the two had a standing Friday night sleepover where they would smoke weed together.
Carrie Fisher was heartbroken after losing her and Paul Simon’s child in a severe ectopic pregnancy, a new book obtained by DailyMail.com reveals. Simon, who split with Fisher after nine months of marriage in 1984 after they dated for five years, was so angered by the failed pregnancy that he didn’t visit Fisher in the hospital
The biography also delves deeper into Fisher’s three-month affair with her Star Wars co-star Harrison Ford, revealing the two had a standing Friday night sleepover where they would smoke weed together
In reaction to the book, Fisher’s former partner Bryan Lourd and their daughter together Billie Lourd denounced the book, saying it was unauthorized by them
In reaction to the book, Fisher’s former partner Bryan Lourd and their daughter together Billie Lourd denounced the book, saying it was unauthorized by them.
Bryan said in a statement on behalf of him and Billie: ‘A person named Sheila Weller has taken it upon herself to sell and write an unauthorized biography based on my daughter’s mother, Carrie Fisher. I do not know Ms. Weller. Billie does not know Ms. Weller. And, to my knowledge, Carrie did not know her.
‘Ms. Weller sold this book on her own without our involvement. For all the fans and friends of Carrie, I just thought it necessary that you know this information before you decided to purchase this book or consider what is being said in the upcoming press interviews Weller will do while trying to sell it.
Sheila Weller’s upcoming book Carrie Fisher: A Life on the Edge is available November 12
‘To be clear I haven’t read the book. The only books about Carrie Fisher worth reading are the ones Carrie wrote herself. She perfectly told us everything we needed to know.’
Weller said in response to the family: ‘I was turned down — but in a gracious email — the first time, and invited to re-inquire later. My two follow-ups met with no response… It is my great admiration for Carrie Fisher’s life and work that compelled me to write the book in the first place.’
Carrie was young and impressionable when she met Ford in 1976 auditioning for what would be her iconic role as Princess Leia in Star Wars.
At the time, Ford was married to Mary Marquardt with two young children but was a Hollywood hipster working as a carpenter, making ends meet by selling dope while waiting for his big break.
He smoked weed on the way to the set and blazed between takes.
Carrie came to the set fresh from a Texas weight loss camp where she lost 10 pounds. Harrison began flirting with Carrie and they began a secretive three-month affair.
No one in the cast or crew knew for decades of this ‘sleepover’ every Friday night when they smoked weed together.
‘I might have ranked as high as number fifteen on his agenda while Harrison was my number one,’ Fisher is quoted.
She added: ‘I could charm the birds out of anyone’s tree but his.’
‘She set herself up for challenge and misery with a withholding, difficult married man fourteen years older’, Weller writes.
Carrie was young and impressionable when she met Ford in 1976 auditioning for what would be her iconic role as Princess Leia in Star Wars. No one in the cast or crew knew for decades of this ‘sleepover’ every Friday night when they smoked weed together
‘I might have ranked as high as number fifteen on his agenda while Harrison was my number one,’ Fisher is quoted. She added: ‘I could charm the birds out of anyone’s tree but his.’ ‘She set herself up for challenge and misery with a withholding, difficult married man fourteen years older’, Weller writes. Pictured: Ford and Fisher in 2015
Fisher’s smoking weed habit would eventually evolve to developing a cocaine habit and self-medicating – which would play a role in her death in December 2016.
Her toxicology report identified that within 72 hours before her death, she had ingested cocaine, methadone, ethanol and opiates as well as having been exposed to heroin and ecstasy.
The Star Wars icon was on the last stretch of a flight from London to Los Angeles when she woke abruptly, vomiting uncontrollably and unable to breathe.
Sleep apnea had worried her for years, but now here it was and she was in full cardiac arrest. Fisher was rushed to intensive care at UCLA’s Medical Center as soon as the plane landed.
There was no news until three days later when Carrie’s daughter Billie and Billie’s father, Bryan Lourd confirmed Carrie’s death on December 27, 2016.
Diagnosed as bipolar two – the name changed from manic depression – Carrie was an admitted drug addict and had refused lithium treatment opting to self-medicated with opiates, until it killed her.
‘Carrie would alternately defy and celebrate the diagnosis for years’ and indulge in her own ‘cocktail of meds’, Weller writes.
‘The diagnosis made her freer about and more accepting of the mania that she had always understood in herself – with the unofficial caveat that she didn’t have to follow treatment in an orthodox fashion.’
Carrie inherited her drug addiction and bipolar disorder from her father, 1960s crooner Eddie Fisher who scandalously abandoned the family for the arms of Elizabeth Taylor – later returning to hit on Carrie, commenting on her large breasts and butt, and to borrow money for the rest of his dissolute life.
On the night before her wedding to Paul Simon, Eddie told her, ‘You have a great a**. You should be marrying me’.
Carrie inherited her drug addiction and bipolar disorder from her father, 1960s crooner Eddie Fisher (pictured together in 1983) who scandalously abandoned the family for Elizabeth Taylor and only returned to see his daughter and hit on her. He reared his ugly persona the night before her wedding to Paul Simon, saying: ‘You have a great a**. You should be marrying me’
‘Carrie inherited a double whammy from her father and struggled mightily with it,’ Weller writes, saying that inheriting both bipolarity and drug addiction was ‘a perfect storm’. Pictured: Eddie Fisher and then-wife Debbie Reynolds and a baby Carrie Fisher in 1957
‘Carrie inherited a double whammy from her father and struggled mightily with it,’ Weller writes, saying that inheriting both bipolarity and drug addiction was ‘a perfect storm’.
‘Eddie shot speed for 13 years and then he was a pill addict and so was I’, Carrie confessed and revealed to Diane Sawyer on national TV.
She admitted she was on ‘everything. Ecstasy, MDA, Percodan. It’s hard to get. You have to lie to doctors’. She even blurted out that she also snorted heroin.
‘I am mentally ill, she told Sawyer. ‘I feel like I’m the doctor and the patient, but a lot of time the doctor isn’t in’.
Eddie shot speed for 13 years and then he was a pill addict and so was I. I’m mentally ill. I feel like I’m the doctor and the patient, but a lot of time the doctor isn’t in.
Fisher found a lifelong close friend in fellow manic-depressive actor Richard Dreyfuss.
Bipolar himself, Dreyfuss understood what it was like to trip through a racing bipolar mind on and off meds.
These were the early days of Saturday Night Live and the cast was hanging out together with Lorne Michaels and Paul, the show’s first musical guest.
Carrie and John Belushi, an SNL regular, had become close platonic friends according to Judy Belushi, and shared ‘a predilection for cocaine’.
Carrie confessed to musical director Guy Strobel that she was taking large quantities of Percocet, oxycodone plus acetaminophen, a drug that bipolars use to self-medicate but typically only taking two a day, according to NY psychologist, Dr. Dean Parker.
‘Carrie would eventually admit to taking thirty a day’, writes Weller.
Describing what it was like to live in her mind during a mild mania:
‘I will tell myself nine stories about what I’m looking at… My drug thing was, if I tell seven stories about every situation, [the drugs would help] to take it down to maybe three.’
The attraction between Carrie and Paul was feverish. Simon, who wore a toupee, was almost as short as Carrie, measuring a mere five foot one. ‘Don’t stand next to me at a party – people will think we’re salt and pepper shakers’, she jested
Paul and Carrie decided to marry in July 1983. He proposed at Yankee Stadium and they were married eight days later. She was 26, he was 41 and they had been together on and off for five years. They divorced nine months later in 1984
Carrie was also consuming Percodan and was first introduced to it from head SNL writer Michael O’Donoghue who used it for migraines.
‘She lived in her head like a madwoman locked in a tower, hearing the wind howling through her hair and waiting for someone to come and rescue her,’ O’Donoghue is quoted.
Meanwhile, Dreyfuss had introduced Carrie to Simon who had divorced his first wife Peggy Harper and was now seeing Popeye actress Shelley Duvall. The attraction between Carrie and Paul was feverish.
Simon, who wore a toupee, was almost as short as Carrie, measuring a mere five foot one. ‘Don’t stand next to me at a party – people will think we’re salt and pepper shakers’, she jested.
Simon rented a yacht that was believed to have once belonged to Aristotle Onassis or Princess Grace Kelly and they traveled through the Greek Islands.
When Paul was out of town, Carrie called Guy Strobel, musical director of Papp’s upcoming production, asking: ‘I’m bedridden at Paul’s. Can you rescue me?’
Meanwhile, Carrie grew increasingly uncomfortable in Paul’s more sophisticated world she viewed as intellectual.
‘I wasn’t ready for them’, Carrie admitted, feeling challenged after dropping out of high school.
Fisher’s relationship with her mother actress Debbie Reynolds was a complicated mother-daughter neediness which made Carrie feel less than in comparison to her mother who always dazzled – and increased Carrie’s drug intake
Fisher’s close friend Guy Strobel saw a disapproving and judgmental mother while Fisher was rehearsing for an upcoming musical production and got the feeling, ‘Nobody can look as good as Debbie Reynolds’. Pictured: Fisher and Reynolds in 2003
She loved to spend her day shopping in Soho with girlfriends. She’d give them money; they’d jump out of the limo and rush to see who could buy the most the fastest.
Paul and Carrie decided to marry in July 1983. He proposed at Yankee Stadium and they were married eight days later.
She was 26, he was 41 and they had been together on and off for five years. They divorced nine months later in 1984.
‘Carrie was an addict. Paul was not’, writes Weller, and her independence was difficult for Paul who really wanted his wife to be waiting at home for him.
Carrie was in rehearsals for a Joseph Papp musical and there were rumors that SNL regular John Belushi would show up at the stage door at the end of rehearsals to snort cocaine with Carrie.
The rumors persisted that Carrie and Belushi were doing coke all night.
In the stands at rehearsal was Debbie Reynolds, who came into the city to help Carrie rehearse.
It was a complicated mother-daughter neediness that made Carrie feel less than in comparison to her mother who always dazzled – and increased Carrie’s drug intake.
By 2007, Carrie seemed to be on fire. But even that extreme treatment didn’t resolve her addictions and she never escaped feeling insecure about her talent compared to that of her razzmatazz mother even though she so successfully metamorphosed from actress to writer who acts and a script doctor. A day after Carrie died on December 27, 2016, her mother Debbie Reynolds also died following a stroke. Pictured: Fisher, Reynolds and Fisher’s daughter Billie in 2015
Strobel saw a disapproving and judgmental mother and got the feeling, ‘Nobody can look as good as Debbie Reynolds’.
Carrie bounced back to LA, bought a house next door to Terri Garr in Laurel Canyon and then was back in New York.
She dropped down to 95 pounds and was trying to stay clean but other users got her back on drugs.
A manic Carrie could talk on the phone for eight to twelve hours with Dreyfuss who would tell her to get back on her meds.
Actor, writer Albert Brooks was concerned for his friend and stated after a drive to Palm Springs, ‘You knew the pain was real. You could tell she was getting crazy, getting overdosed. You knew she was looking for some kind of peace, and you were worried she could die’.
By 2007, Carrie seemed to be on fire.
She had been in rehab and agreed to ECT – shock treatments initially three times a week for three weeks and then once every six weeks.
But even that extreme treatment didn’t resolve her addictions and she never escaped feeling insecure about her talent compared to that of her razzmatazz mother even though she so successfully metamorphosed from actress to writer who acts and a script doctor.
Sheila Weller’s upcoming book Carrie Fisher: A Life on the Edge is available November 12