Carrie Fisher reveals how she found out about Princess Leia casting in audiobook excerpt

Carrie Fisher freaked out when she found out she was cast Princess Leia in Star Wars. The actress talks about the moment she got the call in her latest book The Princess Diarist, and EW is excited to premiere an excerpt of the passage from the audiobook, read by Fisher.

When she got the call, Fisher says, she dropped the phone and ran into her front yard of her home in L.A. It was raining, surely a sign from the universe. Fisher repeats over and over how happy she was to get to be this badass princess. "I was Princess Leia. I had never been Princess Leia before, and now I would be her forever," she narrates. There's also a juicy detail hidden in this clip: Fisher says that they paid her nothing for the first movie.

The Princess Diarist is inspired by Fisher's old diaries from when she was working on the first Star Wars movie. The book includes excerpts from the diaries and Fisher's funny and poignant insight about them. The audiobook is narrated by Fisher herself, and in a sweet intergenerational touch, her daughter Billie Lourd reads the diary entries.

Fisher is the author of two memoirs, including Wishful Drinking, and four novels. The Princess Diarist is available now in hardcover and audiobook from Penguin Random House.

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