Carrie Fisher was a woman of many titles– icon, actress, celebrity daughter, writer and memoirist– but she was also the author of the too-short-lived advice column in the Guardian, "Advice from the Dark Side."
Merope Mills, the Guardian's West Coast Editor, was tasked with casting the role of advice-giver before the column began in June of this year.
"I’d already had Carrie Fisher in mind because she’s had such an interesting life and so many different experiences," Mills said. "Marriage, parenthood, mental illness, addiction."
But what really caught Mill's eye was this tweet from Fisher:
Please stop debating about whetherOR not👁aged well.unfortunately it hurts all3 of my feelings.My BODY hasnt aged as well as I have.Blow us👌🏼
— Carrie Fisher (@carrieffisher) December 29, 2015
"It was just sort of masterful and it summed her up so well," Mills said. "I mean, it was honest! And after that, I made an approach and she very quickly said yes."
The name fell into place shortly soon after that. "It was clear to me that she loved sort of punning names, you know “Wishful Drinking” and all that– they were all her’s," Mills said.
THE INTRODUCTION
The first piece Fisher wrote in the Guardian was an introduction to the column. In it she writes, "Tell me your story, I'll tell you mine." That's how the column felt for a lot of readers, like Fisher was telling them "here's something that I went through and maybe it could be helpful," rather than offering prescriptive advice.
Yes, I think that was very much the way she lived, not just in the column but in life–she’d had these experiences of bipolar disorder and mental illness and she wasn’t shy about talking about them, either in her column or in her books. If you met her, one-to-one, she was an open book, brilliant to spend time with. And so rare that you find people of her level of celebrity willing to talk about the highs and the lows as much as she was.
THE FIRST COLUMN
In Fisher's very first column, a woman writes in to ask if she can trust her husband again after he sleeps with a prostitute, which is to say the least, a heavy topic to start with.
We get so many letters...and I didn’t just send her one–I sent her a whole handful. And I said, “this one I think is brilliant and I’d love to see how you answer it.” And you know, she didn’t disappoint.
It got a huge reaction, not least of all because she wrote this brilliant letter that said keep trying with him. She said that partly because I met her at a time in her life where she was trying to find someone. She wanted companionship and she was trying to say to the letter-writer, don’t give up on a relationship.
THE LAST COLUMN
In her last column, a young woman asks Fisher about her struggle with bipolar disorder, an illness that Fisher was very open about living with. She told the letter writer, "As your bipolar sister, I'll be watching."
The absolute vast majority of letters we got to her were about some form of mental illness. She really felt an incredible duty of care to people. At the end of the first letter, to the lady whose husband is sleeping with prostitutes, she says “I want to send you a present” and to this one she says “I’m your bipolar sister.” And having met her and having been around her, she really cared for people. She was a very warm person, and I think that shown through with that letter and all the others.
And you know, she made lots of jokes about getting awards for mental illness– it was the subject of lots of gags from her book. But in her house, right in sort of prideful place, there is an award she received from a charity for her services toward mental illness. And she said to me “I’m most proud of that.”