Billie Lourd was Carrie Fischer’s body double in Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker

Lourd acted as a body double in one of the film's most emotional scenes

Billie Lourd stood in for her mother Carrie Fischer to film a flashback scene in Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker.

Most of Fischer’s scenes were captured using previously unused footage from before Fischer passed, but director J.J. Abrams wanted to avoid an entirely CGI character for an emotional moment in the film.

ILM Visual Effects Supervisor Patrick Tubach explained the process and reasoning to Yahoo! Entertainment, explaining that Lourd stepped in as a body double and Fisher’s face was digitally mapped on in the edit.

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“It was a poignant thing,” said Tubach. “And something that nobody took lightly — that she was willing to stand in for her mom.”

“It was an emotional thing for everybody to see her in that position. It felt great for us, too. If you’re going to have someone play [Fisher’s] part, it’s great that it’s [Billie] because there are a lot of similarities between them that we were able to draw from. The real challenge was just making the Leia footage we had to work with fit in that scene.”

Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker received mixed reviews, as the final chapter in the nine-part timeline didn’t meet everyone’s expectations sufficiently.

NME’s Alex Flood gave the film three stars, calling it “a sufficiently satisfying finale that gives fans exactly what they want.”

Elsewhere, fans are picking up on a very specific detail of the film and have spawned a viral meme phenomenon, in the shape of the #BenSoloChallenge.

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