CULTURE

Carrie Fisher Wins Her First Grammy for Best Spoken Word Album

Just over one year after her death.

Jan. 28, 2018

Composite. Jerritt Clark/Getty Images

Carrie Fisher was nominated for Emmys, BAFTAs, and Saturn Awards over her near 40-year acting career—but the late actress just won her first-ever Grammy Award posthumously at this year’s pre-telecast ceremony.

Fisher was nominated in the Best Spoken Word Album category for her 2016 memoir, The Princess Diarist, which is based on her journal entries from the time she worked on her first Star Wars film in 1977. Fisher’s third memoir (and seventh book) beat out fellow nominees Neil deGrasse Tyson, Bruce Springsteen, Shelly Peiken, and Bernie Sanders and Mark Ruffalo. Though this memoir earned Fisher her first-ever Grammy Award, this wasn’t her first nomination: She was previously nominated back in 2009 in the same category for her book-turned-one-woman-play Wishful Drinking.

Fisher’s daughter, Billie Lourd, who has posted several tributes to her mother in the year since her death, took to Instagram to congratulate her late mother on the posthumous win. “Princess Diarist was the last profesh(ish) thing my momby and I got to do together,” she wrote, alongside a photo of her and Fisher. “I wish she was here to carry me down the red carpet in some bizarre floral ensemble but instead we’ll celebrate in true Carrie style: In bed, in front of the TV, over cold Coca Colas and warm e-cigs. I’m beyond proud.”

Fisher’s Star Wars costar Mark Hamill also took to social media to applaud Fisher on the award. “CONGRATULATIONS to my #GRAMMY-winning #SpaceSis!!! #AlwaysWithUs #AlwaysAWinner #CarrieOnFOREVER,” he tweeted.

The Princess Diarist was published in November 2016, and it was on a flight back to Los Angeles from the European leg of Fisher’s book tour that she suffered the medical emergency that ultimately led to her death at the age of 60 in December 2016. Prior to her passing, the book had garnered plenty of buzz thanks to the bombshell revelation that she and costar Harrison Ford had an on-set affair—while he was a 33-year-old married father of two and she was just 19.