Carrie Fisher Couldn't Tell the Difference Between CG Princess Leia and Actual Footage Princess Leia
There were a ton of great moments in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. One of the most shocking and surprising scenes was when a young version of Princess Leia popped up on screen. The CG used to bring that character back to life for the story by ILM was so freakin' good! It definitely had audiences doing a double-take.
There was a good amount of controversy about the CG used in the film to recreate a younger version of Carrie Fisher and bring Peter Cushing back as Grand Moff Tarkin but I thought it was great! I had no issues at all as long as all the appropriate parties signed off on it.
When it came time for Fisher to sign off on it, according to director Gareth Edwards, when she was first shown the footage she didn't even realize it was CG. She thought it was some unused footage from the original Star Wars shoot that she had forgotten about. During an interview with Fandango, the director explains:
“We had about two weeks left, and Kathy went around her house and everyone was waiting to hear. [Kathy] said she showed it to her and [Carrie] thought it was footage. She didn’t realize it was CGI. She thought we had some footage. She didn’t remember the take and thought we had manipulated a take from the original film. But they told her it was all computer generated and she was really impressed. We were all just so pleased she approved it.”
Regardless of what you thought of the CG recreations of these actors, if some of you thought they looked fake, it's a testament to the awesome job ILM did when the actress who played the actual character couldn't tell the difference.
