Turning drama into comedy

Carrie Fisher lives by motto: ‘I have problems, but problems don’t have me’

PROFILE. When Carrie Fisher began writing her autobiographical one-woman show, “Wishful Drinking,” she made sure to run the material by everyone she discusses. According to Fisher, most received their passages gracefully. But the harshest judge was her 16-year-old daughter.

“If you’re a 16-year-old girl you’re not going to like your mom anyway,” Fisher says, matter-of-factly. “And I try and fix things if anyone’s uncomfortable with anything, because really, I’m the person that I’m talking about. It’s just that I exist in relationship to the people in my life.”

And oh what a life it has been. Milestones of her experience include drug addiction, depression, a man who left her for another man, and a father who left her mother for Elizabeth Taylor, (In one segment of her show, she points to pictures on a chalkboard and says, “For those of you who that are younger — all three of you — and can’t relate to any of this, try to think of Eddie as Brad Pitt, Debbie as Jennifer Aniston and Elizabeth as Angelina Jolie.”)

“I’m telling the easy sh-t,” Fisher laughs. “And I love these people. All of them. So I don’t say any of this because I feel like I’m a victim.”

As evidenced by how she puts her father’s affair in context, Fisher deals with her drama by turning it into comedy.  

She says she likes the power of being able to make shameful episodes from her past into the comic parts of her show, like with a magic wand.

“If you can get it to that point, that’s art,” she says. “To be able to laugh at something that was so painful, it’s the biggest alchemy you can pull off.”

Turning memories into marketable words is nothing new for Fisher. Her first book, 1987’s “Postcards from the Edge” was a thinly veiled autobiographical account of a substance abusing actress.

“Most writing is autobiographical to some extent,” Fisher says, “although some people do very much disguise it and use a lot more imagination than I ever do. I’m more damaged than I am imaginative.”

Fisher says her days of using have cost her some potential material.

When we bring up a video we found of her dancing with a hirsute Ringo Starr in a video for “You’re Sixteen,” she says she doesn’t even remember that day.

“You’re talking to someone who took a lot of drugs, and who has had  electroshock therapy,” she says in  a tone devoid of both shame and pride. “But, yeah, I found that online too, and that is creepy.”

Fisher says she finds similarities between performing her current show and standing up at an AA meeting and admitting to be an alcoholic.

“Once you declare something like any of this stuff,  you own it,” she says. “You’re no longer run by your secrets. It is ‘I have problems. Problems don’t have me.’”
When we ask Fisher if that’s a mantra she learned through any of the dozen doctors she says she has, she proudly claims authorship of the motto.

“Well, it has taken me a long long time,” she laughs, “and a lotta lotta problems!”

‘Wishful Drinking’
Oct. 10 through Oct. 26
BU Theatre
264 Huntington Ave., Boston
MBTA: Green Line to Symphony
$20-$82.50, 617 266-0800
www.huntingtontheatre.org

A LONG TIME AGO, IN A GALAXY NOT TOO FAR AWAY

Fisher says she doesn’t actually own any of the collectible action figures of herself as Princess Leia Organa from “Star Wars.”

“I usually give them away,” she says, before offering to hunt around for some.

“Let me see if there’s any in my — I have the shampoo,” she pronounces as she locates a bottle made in her likeness. “Oh, and I have the metal bikini doll — the one that I talk about in the show.” 

Speaking of metal bikini, does she still have it?

"No, but I got one that they made up for - oh, I don’t remember what the show is called," she says, before we both figure out it's  "Deal or No Deal."

"Anyway, they put a whole bunch of Princess Leias up so I made them get me one of those outfits. But it’s in fabric- it’s not metal."

So, speaking of metal bikini again, how does Carrie Fisher feel about being a sex symbol for sci-fi nerds?

"I didn’t know that I was until way later," she promises, "and I don’t know how I would have processed that kind of information knowing it at the time. But I recently went into a store, and this guy said to me, 'Oh my God, you’re...,' you know, and I do the [humble] 'Yes I am.' And he said, 'I thought about you every day from when I was 12 to when I was 22.' And rather than say 'What happened at 22?' I said 'Every day?' and he said, 'Well, four times a day.' ... So all you can really think of in a situation like that is, How bizarre."