J.J. Abrams Reveals Carrie Fisher Apparently Knew He Would Direct Another 'Star Wars' Film!

It seems like Carrie Fisher knew something no one else did at the time.

Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker director J.J. Abrams sat down for an interview with Stephen Colbert on Monday night’s (November 25) The Late Show and dished about Carrie‘s lasting impact on the Star Wars films. And it turns out, she somehow knew plenty more than he did about her iconic character Leia’s journey.

Stephen asked Abrams about the fact that he read somewhere that George Lucas had originally intended the third series of Star Wars films to be Leia’s story.

“She was the greatest,” said Abrams about the late Fisher. “And we knew that there was no way that we could finish this Skywalker saga without Leia. It was impossible. And we knew we’d never want to do a digital Leia and of course couldn’t recast it.”

“I remembered we had these scenes that we had shot in The Force Awakens that we’d never used, which at the time I was really upset that we weren’t using them because it was Carrie and it was Leia and how do you not use them? But it just didn’t work in the movie. And weirdly, those scenes were material that we 100 percent realized that could be used to tell her story in this film,” J.J. continued. “So every time you’re seeing Leia in scenes with characters it’s Carrie in this movie. And I still can’t quite believe that she’s gone, because we’ve been working on these scenes in editorial and she’s as there as anyone. It’s really uncanny.”

Oddly, Carrie Fisher left a message in her book, “The Princess Diarist,” for Abrams before she passed away: “I wasn’t supposed to work on this film, and she passed away before The Last Jedi was released, and she wrote this book,” he said. “She thanked me at the very end, she says, ‘Special thanks to J.J. Abrams, for putting up with me twice.’ And I had never worked with her before The Force Awakens and I wasn’t supposed to direct Episode IX.”

Lastly, Stephen asked J.J. Abrams to identify which Star Wars theories are true and which are rubbish – Watch after the cut!

READ MORE: J.J. Abrams Reveals How ‘Star Wars: Rise of Skywalker’ Script Ended Up on eBay

Click inside to watch the rest of J.J. Abrams’ appearance on The Late Show…