Learning lessons in unexpected places. Billie Lourd spoke candidly about how her late mother Carrie Fisher’s parenting style taught her “what not to do” as a new mom.
“My main job when she was alive was taking care of her and making sure she was OK,” the American Horror Story alum, 29, said of the Stars Wars actress during a Monday, October 4, “New Day” podcast episode. “I was her main support, and I was 7, for a lot of the time, and that was really hard, and that’s why I grew up really fast because I was her best friend. I was her mother, I was her kid, I was her everything. And that’s one of the things I’m learning not to do with my kid.”
Fisher died in December 2016 at age 60, and her mom, Debbie Reynolds, died one day later. Four years later, Lourd gave birth to her and Austen Rydell‘s now-12-month-old son, Kingston.
While raising the little one, the Scream Queens alum is focusing on not putting the same “pressure” on her toddler as her mom did with her.
“There’s a lot of things that my mom taught me to do and then there’s a lot that is, honestly it might be more valuable, of what not to do,” the New York University grad said on Monday. “And that’s one of the things that I will not do to my son.”
Lourd penned a touching tribute to Fisher in December 2018, marking the second anniversary of the Grammy winner’s death with a song.
“I decided to do something a little vulnerable for me, but something we both loved to do together. Sing,” the Los Angeles native wrote via Instagram at the time. “And as the song says, we must ‘keep on moving.’ I’ve found that what keeps me moving is doing things that make me happy, working hard on the things that I’m passionate about and surrounding myself with people I love and making them smile.”
Lourd concluded at the time: “I hope this encourages anyone feeling a little low or lost to ‘keep on moving’. As my Momby once said, ‘take your broken heart and turn it into art.’ Whatever that art may be for you.”
The previous year, Lourd told Ellen DeGeneres that losing her mother was “surreal and impossible to deal with,” saying, “There’s no way to really explain it, and it’s so hard to talk about. If I say that I’m doing good, I’m too happy. If I say that I’m not doing good, then I’m a mess.”
