Director J.J. Abrams and his co-writer Chris Terrio certainly had their work cut out for them with the final film in the Skywalker saga, Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker. Not only did they have to bring the saga to a close in a way that paid tribute to the story and characters, but they had to bring the beloved character of Leia to life from the unused footage from films gone by.
Early on in the process, the writers were asked if they would be relying on CGI to help in the process, and that was a question they had to ask themselves as well, but they ended up wanting the most realistic portrayal possible, and so they ended up going with footage from the previous films. While Leia actress Carrie Fisher passed away in 2016, she had completed most of the shots for the 2017 film, The Last Jedi. But Abrams and Terrio were starting from scratch in the final film and had to work Leia’s story around the usable footage they could get for Fisher.
Luckily, according to Terrio, via an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, they had a treasure trove at their disposal. He explained:
“As far as the audio goes, every word that she says in the movie she’s said as Leia in Star Wars. I’d have to talk to Skywalker Sound about which bits were usable exactly as they were and which bits were cobbled together with different audio tracks. We had all the audio that Leia says at our disposal, and of course, every word that she says on camera is really Carrie.
He went on to explain that they even tapped into the original trilogy, saying:
We also had access to the dailies from the original trilogy, and in the flashback of Luke and Leia, that image of Carrie comes from Return of the Jedi. So, we had access to everything in the archive, which turned out to be super helpful. So, yeah, the original trilogy was on our table for the flashback and for audio. That said, Leia was a very different person in the new trilogy, and I’m not sure that we would’ve used any audio from the original trilogy. Her voice had changed, and obviously, she was older, wiser and had a different quality to her performance. So, I’m not sure we ended up using any audio from the original trilogy, and we tried to stay true to Carrie’s acting intentions as much as we could.”
That’s pretty awesome. I wish Fisher were still alive so that she could have reprised her role in real life, but they used what they had, and I believe they paid tribute to Fisher and the wonderful character of Leia in the best way they could.