Carrie Fisher had done a lot by 2007. But it wasn’t until that year that her work earned her an Emmy nomination.
Her guest spot in an episode of “30 Rock” as Rosemary Howard, an eccentric comedy writer who broke barriers in the 1970s, became iconic, helped make the episode one of the best in the NBC series’ entire run and scored her a nomination for outstanding guest actress in a comedy series.
“Carrie Fisher meant a lot to me,” Tina Fey said in a statement to Time on Tuesday as news broke of Fisher’s death. “Like many women my age, Princess Leia occupies about 60 percent of my brain at any given time. But Carrie’s honest writing and her razor-sharp wit were an even greater gift. I feel so lucky that I got to meet her. I’m very sad she is gone.”
Aside from her star-making Princess Leia role and her best-selling books, Fisher’s appearances in numerous television shows and movies over the past three decades – no matter how small – made those moments memorable.
Throughout her career, Fisher flexed her comedic chops; she ably played Marie, the best friend of Meg Ryan’s character in “When Harry Met Sally.” That performance made up some of the best parts of the 1980s rom-com, Vulture declared. That decade she was also a mystery woman in the comedy “Blues Brothers.”
She even appeared in an episode of “Dr. Katz: Professional Therapist,” a 1990s animated series that featured standup comics who went on to become some of the biggest names in comedy. In a Thanksgiving episode, Fisher played Roz, the ex-wife of Dr. Katz.
Fisher was a nun in the 2001 movie “Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back.” She voiced Angela, Peter’s boss, in numerous “Family Guy” episodes. And Fisher made cameos in “Weeds” and “Smallville.”
Some of her roles later in life had to do with her iconic place in pop culture as galactic royalty: She played herself in an episode of “Big Bang Theory” and voiced Princess Leila in a 2008 “Robot Chicken” parody of “Star Wars.”
“Good night, sweet princess,” reads a tweet from the show.
More recently, she played Rob Delaney’s mother Mia on the Amazon series “Catastrophe.” Fisher, who was contacted by the show’s creators through Twitter, had later explained her interest in the part: “I did really want to play an awful person,” Fisher said earlier this year. “There are not a lot of choices for women past 27. I don’t wait by the phone.”