Billie Lourd understands that everyone still wants to know how she's doing after the death of her mother Carrie Fisher and grandmother Debbie Reynolds last December. She's talked about them in interviews and onstage in the months since. When Lourd sat down with Ellen DeGeneres for Tuesday's show, however, she admitted that she feels like whatever she says about it, it won't come out quite right.
"There's no way to really explain it; it's so hard to talk about," she said. "I don't know, if I say that I'm doing good, I'm too happy. And if I say that I'm not doing good, then I'm a mess. So it's really hard to know what to say about it, because it is just so surreal and impossible to deal with."
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Sure enough, the headlines other outlets have gleaned from this interview are quick to pull something negative from those sentences. The truth is, grief doesn't come in a conveniently presentable package, nor does it follow the downward slope others might expect.
Whether she is "doing good" or not, she was upbeat speaking to DeGeneres about how her mother finally encouraged her to pursue acting after they filmed their scenes together for Star Wars: The Force Awakens.
"I came home and my mom said, 'You know, this is really weird that you're comfortable here. This is one of the most uncomfortable environments in the world. If you're comfortable here, you should do this,' " Lourd said.
That led to the third-generation star having a casual meal with Ryan Murphy, who asked her to read for Scream Queens. Now, she's appearing in Murphy's American Horror Story: Cult, which happens to be another thing she can't properly describe.
"I'm going to ruin this and get fired," she said. We'll let her off the hook for that one.
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