James Blunt blames ‘Star Wars’ workload for Carrie Fisher’s drugs relapse

James Blunt has blamed the pressure of the Star Wars workload for Carrie Fisher’s drugs relapse.

The Princess Leia actor died in 2016 after suffering a cardiac arrest on board a flight from London to Los Angeles. She was 60 years old.

READ MORE: James Blunt: “Occasionally I looked at myself and thought, ‘I’d punch you in the face'”

The coroner’s report later confirmed that cocaine plus “traces” of heroin and MDMA (also known as ecstasy) had been found in her system. TMZ reported at the time that morphine, codeine and oxycodone were also present.

Blunt – who once lived with Fisher in LA, and described her as his “best, best friend” – opened up about the late star’s final days during a recent appearance at the 2024 Hay Festival (via Music News).

“I just knew that the day before she died when she came back to my house, and she’d been really mistreating her body and she’d just got the job again of being Princess Leia in the new Star Wars movies,” he told the audience.

“So she’s really on a high and positive, but they had applied a lot of pressure on her to be thin, which is what they do. So she spoke about the difficulties that women have in the industry that men are allowed to grow old and women are not.”

Blunt continued: “She had to really put a lot of pressure on herself and started abusing drugs again… So by the time she got on the plane, she had practically killed herself. They said it was a heart failure but she had taken enough drugs to have a great party.”

During an interview with NME last November, Blunt revealed that a visit to the Fisher’s house had inspired his song ‘Dark Thought’.

Before the singer-songwriter became famous, Fisher put him up in her LA compound – where he recorded his hit ballad ‘Goodbye My Lover’ in her bathroom. Blunt explained that ‘Dark Thought’ describes the moment he returned to that house after Fisher passed away.

“It must be about seven years since she died, I’m not entirely sure, but it’s taken me all of that time to write a song for her,” he told NME.

“As a songwriter, the most honest song is normally the easiest to write because it just flows out of you. But I’ve been overthinking this song for so many years because she’s just such an incredible human being.”

Blunt added: “And so what I did with the song is I just described the moment I went back looking for her after her death. I went back to her house on a whim, drove up to her gate, and put my hand on it just to feel a little bit of her there. And I wrote the song about that moment.”

You can watch the full video interview for NME‘s ‘In Conversation’ series above.

Meanwhile, James Blunt has announced a 20th anniversary reissue of his debut album ‘Back To Bedlam’, as well as a special UK/Ireland and European tour.

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