With Carrie Fisher's final performance approaching with the release of Star Wars: The Last Jedi, many people have looked back on her life and work with a fond remembrance of her accomplishments. One such person is Last Jedi director Rian Johnson, who admired Fisher as both an actress and a writer. Johnson revealed in an interview that Fisher helped him in the writing process, brainstorming ideas and lines for scenes.
"Carrie was, you know, a writer first and foremost. She loved words," said Johnson (via ComicBook). "We would get together and we would go over the scenes. We wouldn't rewrite the scenes but she would throw out suggestions for jokes, and lines, and ideas. And we'd go back and forth."
"There are a few scenes that we got together with her and the other actors in the scene and kind of shaped it," Johnson contniued. "I mean, if you have Carrie Fisher standing there with you, you'd be a fool not to use her writing talents. That was probably her main contribution. I’d go to her house, we’d sit on her bed for hours and just go through the script and just have this stream of consciousness, ad lib sessions.There would be a four word line of dialogue that would be the distillation of all of that that would be like, ‘Brilliant!’”
Fisher's involvement in writing doesn't come as much of a surprise; the actress rewrote a lot of dialog in George Lucas's original films (specifically The Empire Strikes Back) to give Leia a more active role in the story. While The Last Jedi wasn't intended to be Leia's final appearance in the franchise, Johnson and more have assured the film will have a fitting send-off for the character. How that happens will be revealed when the film arrives in theatres on December 15, 2017.