Billie Lourd, best known for her role on Scream Queens, turned to Instagram to share a deeply personal moment: how she finally told her 5-year-old son a partial truth about his grandmother Carrie Fisher’s passing—and why the conversation left her feeling “mad,” while describing grief as “a weird soup of feelings.”
Nine years have passed since Carrie Fisher’s sudden death, but Lourd, 33, is keeping the legacy of the Star Wars icon—forever beloved as Princess Leia—alive. She marked what would have been Fisher’s 69th birthday (the actress died on December 16, 2016, at 60) with a raw, emotional tribute on social media, sharing a nostalgic black-and-white photo from her childhood. The image shows Lourd alongside Fisher and her own late grandmother, Hollywood legend Debbie Reynolds, who died two years after Fisher at 84.
The photo was paired with an intensely vulnerable (and lengthy) caption, where Lourd laid bare the complicated emotions grief has brought her. “My mom would’ve been 69 today—and that still feels shockingly young, considering this is the ninth birthday of hers I’ve ‘celebrated’ without her,” the Scream Queens star wrote. “It feels like she’s been gone so long, she should be 100 by now? Like losing someone who’s 100 is easier to accept? But 69? That doesn’t feel right at all.”
She went on: “Every time I meet someone older than her, I get secretly jealous. Why couldn’t she have lived that long? I think anyone who’s lost a loved one too soon might get that. So I can’t really call this a fully happy birthday—she’s not here to enjoy the joy. She never got to meet her grandkids, never got to see how magical, smart, funny, and kind they are now.”
Before her death, Fisher was open about her lifelong battle with substance abuse—a reality that made talking about her passing a sensitive topic for Lourd, who shares 5-year-old son Kingston Fisher Lourd Rydell and 2-year-old daughter Jackson Joanne Lourd Rydell with her partner. But recently, Lourd took the leap and told her son a small piece of the truth.
“The other night, my son asked me how she died,” she shared. “I told him she didn’t take care of her body—telling him the truth without dumping the whole truth on him. Right away, he said, ‘Oh, but I take care of my body!’ I replied, ‘Yes, you do! And I do too, and daddy does too!’ Death isn’t hanging over our door the way it always felt like it was for her. That’s a conversation for when he’s older. He didn’t push for more answers, so we left it at that. But it broke my heart.”
Fisher suffered a heart attack during a flight from London to Los Angeles in 2016, but L.A. County coroners later determined her death was caused by complications related to sleep apnea, according to TMZ. The coroner’s report also listed drug use under “other conditions” that contributed to her passing, though officials couldn’t confirm if those drugs were significant enough to trigger the heart attack.
Talking to her son about the truth clearly stirred up a mix of emotions for Lourd. While she admitted she still holds some pent-up anger, she’s focused on honoring her mother in a positive way.
“It made me mad at her,” she continued. “Being mad at someone who’s dead is so weird—you don’t have anywhere to put that feeling. But it’s still there, and I’ve had to learn to let myself feel all of it: mad at her for not getting sober, sad for her that she couldn’t get sober, but also so grateful that she existed at all. So I let myself be mad for a minute, then I realized I want her birthday to have some happiness in it—especially for my kids.”
“She was a brilliant, magical person, and I want them to know that,” Lourd added. “So no matter how many messy emotions I’m feeling on days like this, I try to celebrate the good parts. I’ll tell the kids funny stories about her, watch one of her movies, eat one of her favorite foods, or have a Coke with a ton of ice. Grief is a weird soup of feelings, and there are a lot of ingredients in it that are hard to swallow—but in the end, I think that soup has made me healthier. It’s made me more aware of how short life is, and more grateful for all the happiness in my life.”
Lourd even joked that she hit Instagram’s character limit (“because I talk too much?”), so she finished her post in the comments section: “And for that, I’m grateful—or ‘griefull,’ if you want to make up a word. Sending my love to anyone out there who’s had to eat this multifaceted soup that is grief. It’s not always tasty, but it might make you a stronger, healthier person. Happy birthday, Momby. I miss you and love you more than you could ever know. ”