Revisit Carrie Fisher’s Uproarious Roast of George Lucas at the 2005 AFI Awards
The world’s still stinging from the loss of Carrie Fisher yesterday, and while we will most likely remember her first as Princess Leia, the actress cultivated a long career of comedy after her Star Wars years. Her one-woman show Wishful Drinking was a must-see on Broadway, and her hilarious, often inscrutable Twitter account will stand as a testament to her bizarre wit. In the wake of Fisher’s sad death on Tuesday, one video in particular has begun to pop up again, and it might just be the comic’s most searing public appearance of all.
In 2005, Fisher took the stage at a gala thrown by the American Film Institute for her former Star Wars director George Lucas, where he was set to receive the Lifetime Achievement Award. Anyone who expected Fisher to work through some pre-prepared talking points about what a visionary director and steadfast friend Lucas had been to her didn’t know the actress at all. When a speaker opens with “…I’m an alcoholic because George Lucas ruined my life,” the audience buckles up for one hell of a ride. With a deadpan you couldn’t break with a crowbar, she delivers one killer line after another at the expense of the perpetually sneaker-clad director. There’s a lot of deliciously vicious comedy packed into the four-minute clip above, but no line can quite match the acidic poetry of “George is a sadist, but like any abused child wearing a metal bikini chained to a giant slug about to die, I keep coming back for more.”
It’s not breaking news that Fisher was a laugh riot, but the specific nature of her comedy — loud, unabashed, coarse without sacrificing intelligence — makes her an inspiration to women and men alike taking the mic today. Fisher’s concluding line brought the house down (“I hope I slept with you to get the job, because if not, who the hell was that guy?”), and 10-plus years later, it still slays.