Todd Fisher is giving niece Billie Lourd time to cope with the loss of her mother Carrie Fisher and grandma Debbie Reynolds.
“There’s a vacuum in the room and she’s feeling it and we’re all feeling it,” Fisher said Wednesday during an interview with “Entertainment Tonight.” “It’s just that I’m 59 and I have no choice but to step up and put this stuff forward. I’m letting [Bille] breathe, you know? She needs to breathe. She needs to step back from all of this loss.”
Carrie suffered a heart attack on a flight from London to Los Angeles on Dec. 23. She died four days later at the age of 60. Reynolds, 84, passed away from a stroke the next day, Dec. 28.
“When I was standing in the room the day after my sister died and we’re in the hospital and my mother was dying, I mean, I was more heartbroken watching my niece than I was for myself,” Todd shared. “It was heart wrenching. The idea that somebody would have to deal with that kind of loss back to back, moment to moment — I mean we’d just had this horrible loss and then here you are just a handful of hours later standing in a different hospital in a different room. It was astounding.”
While Billie retreated to Mexico with rumored boyfriend Taylor Lautner, 25, shortly after the passings, Todd knows the strength that resides in his niece.
“She’s also genetically Carrie and Debbie,” Todd said, before mentioning Billie’s father, Bryan Lourd. “I don’t want to lead Bryan Lourd out of this. He’s an awesome father and if it wasn’t for him right now, we would be in a much tougher position. He supported her beautifully.”
“You take those genes, and I think you’ve created a pretty powerful gal … and she is a lot more like my mother even than Carrie. You know, she’s a little like Carrie but she’s a lot like my mother, which means she’s going to be another Molly Brown,” he continued.
Todd and Billie will both be present at Saturday’s public memorial for the late mother-daughter pair, which will take place inside the 1,200-seat theater at Hollywood’s Forest Lawn cemetery.