Star Wars has been more or less the crux of pop culture phenomena, and being a part of something as massive as perhaps one of the world’s most treasured franchises ever comes at a price. For Carrie Fisher, the late actress who had been one with the Force, it was in the form of a nightmarish dating life and the derogatory slave costume that turned her into a s*x symbol.
And that is exactly the kind of that fate she didn’t want Daisy Ridley to become subjected to upon her ascent toward stardom.
Carrie Fisher’s Words of Wisdom to Daisy Ridley
Back when Daisy Ridley‘s debut Star Wars film was just a month or so away from its world premiere, Carrie Fisher, who’d been privy to the ins and outs of the intergalactic world of Jedis and Stormtroopers, sat down with the newcomer for a chat.
Fisher, who portrayed Princess Leia in the original Star Wars movies, urged Ridley to never let herself be reduced to a s*x icon, the shackles of which were something the former had been awfully familiar with. Especially when it came to her golden bikini, the cliched slave outfit that rendered her the object of male desire. The late actress was strictly against Ridley entertaining such machinations that existed for the sole reason of diminishing the woman in question to nothing but a s*xual fantasy.
“Well, you should fight for your outfit. Don’t be a slave like I was…You keep fighting against that slave outfit,” The Empire Strikes Back star told Ridley, who in turn, assured her that she would do everything in her power to fortify her integrity. “I’ll fight,” the English actress said. “I will.”
Why the Gold Bikini Became the Bane of Her Existence
To being with, the two-piece metal garment that Fisher first donned in 1983’s Return of the Jedi, had never been of her own volition. In fact, she hadn’t really been given a say in the matter at all, something the actress once confessed in an interview with NPR.
The outfit that would later go down in history as an ’80s memorabilia had been introduced with the solitary purpose of accentuating Princess Leia’s “allure as a woman,” something that inevitably led to the objectification of the actress portraying her. And the fact that the “nearly naked” attire had never been her choice and even made her “nervous” held little to no significance to George Lucas.
So, after being hypers*xualized in a metal gold bikini resembling a slave, it makes perfect sense why Fisher would not want her successor in the franchise, Daisy Ridley, to witness something that abhorrent for herself.
Source: Interview Magazine
