Carrie Fisher Once Revealed She ‘Hated’ Wearing the Iconic ‘Return of the Jedi’ Gold Bikini: ‘It Made Me Very Nervous’
Princess Leia’s iconic hair buns in Star Wars are perhaps most famously associated with the character, but the bikini she wore in Return of the Jedi comes in a close second. It turns out Carrie Fisher hated the costume choice for a very good reason.
Carrie Fisher wasn’t into Princess Leia’s hairstyle
The inspiration for Leia’s buns came from director George Lucas’ exploration of other cultures. “I was working very hard to create something different that wasn’t fashion, so I went with a kind of southwestern, Pancho Villa woman, revolutionary look,” Lucas told Time in 2002. “The buns are basically from turn-of-the-century Mexico.”
During a 2015 interview with Allure, Fisher spoke about the Leia Star Wars hairstyle and how unflattering she though it was. “I weighed about 105 pounds at the time … But I carried about 50 of those pounds in my face. So you know what a good idea would be…? Give me a hairstyle that further widens my already wide face!”
She also shared how time-consuming the look was to pull off, though she later discovered it could have been easily achieved with little effort. “It took them two hours to do that hairstyle. I’d come in at 5 in the morning, before anyone… Later on, I did Saturday Night Live… They clunked a hairpiece on, and it looked exactly the same.”
Carrie Fisher said she ‘hated’ the gold bikini
While Princess Leia’s hairstyle wasn’t a favorite for Fisher, she once shared how much she hated that iconic gold bikini.
During a 2016 interview for NPR’s Fresh Air, Fisher was asked about the scene in Return of the Jedi where she has to wear a gold metal bikini. She had a lot of apprehension about the costume choice, noting how it made her “nervous” to wear it.
Speaking about the scene, Fisher shared a glimpse into a joke she made during the rehearsal that she thought should have been in the movie.
“When we first rehearsed it, [Han (Harrison Ford) and Luke (Mark Hamill) are] brought in front of Jabba. They talk to Jabba, Jabba talks to Harrison and Mark, and then they’re led off,” she recalled. “They never say, ‘Hey, how are you?’ So as they were being led off, I said, in the rehearsal, ‘Don’t worry about me! I’ll be fine! Seriously!,’ which I thought they should’ve kept in there.”
Fisher continued, “It was like, ‘Where am I in all of this?’ … I have to stay with the slug with the big tongue! Nearly naked, which is not a style choice for me… It wasn’t my choice. When [Lucas] showed me the outfit, I thought he was kidding and it made me very nervous.”
“I had to sit very straight because I couldn’t have lines on my sides, like little creases. No creases were allowed, so I had to sit very, very rigid straight,” she added.
Fisher reiterated how much she “hated” the costume and how satisfying it was to kill the villain. “What redeems it is I get to kill him, which was so enjoyable,” she explained. “I sawed his neck off with that chain that I killed him with. I really relished that because I hated wearing that outfit and sitting there rigid straight, and I couldn’t wait to kill him.”
