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While the Star Wars saga is arguably the late, great Carrie Fisher’s most notable claim to fame, the famed actress and writer also built an avid following around her immense wit and scathing candor. It’s no wonder she got along with writer and director Kevin Smith, a fact that was reaffirmed thanks to an experience shared by Smith. In fact, the director shared exactly how he was exposed to that Fisher wit firsthand during the filming of Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back.
During a recent double header watch party that saw Kevin Smith using Twitter to run commentary on the 2001 film, he fondly remembered how he got Carrie Fisher to agree to play the part of a nun in the View Askewniverse saga. As part of the watch party he noted:
CARRIE FISHER agreed to be in STRIKE BACK for no money. She just wanted us to buy a pair of antique beaver chairs. When I met her on set, I asked 'Why the chairs?' She said, 'I thought beaver was ironic currency to be in your movie.' Loved her so much.
It’s a story that could only come from the set of a Kevin Smith movie, as this Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back anecdote showed just how kindred the spirits of Carrie Fisher and Smith actually were. Her ability to read people so sharply had always been a trait that made Fisher an iconic fixture in show business, even past her role as General Leia Organa in the Star Wars' Skywalker Saga.
The end result of this comedic negotiation between mutual pranksters led to one of the funniest scenes in Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back. In an appearance prefaced by fellow comedy legend George Carlin teaching the ever-impressionable Jay (Jason Mewes) the “unwritten rule of the road," Carrie Fisher’s cameo sees her playing an unnamed nun that is on the receiving end of the joke’s total payoff.
Here’s the punchline of that particular Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back gag, courtesy of a clip from the film:
It’s a joke that, in lesser hands of writing, directing, and performing, may have fallen flat, but between Kevin Smith’s crafting of the joke, and Carrie Fisher’s performance of said comedic equation, Jay’s decision to try and pleasure a woman of the cloth in Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back became a knock out combination in the early acts of this Hollywood adventure. And all it took was two antique beaver chairs, which is as good of a handshake between snark masters as anyone has ever seen.
Carrie Fisher is one of the only people who could think up something this poignantly outrageous as payment for a small, but extremely memorable cameo in Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back. As Fisher knew how to read people like a book, she also knew how to make friends with the right people and scorn those who truly deserved it. It’s one of the reasons why her memory has loomed so large over the entertainment industry, and why she’ll always be remembered in such glowing terms.
Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back is available to rent or own on Digital HD, Blu-ray, and DVD; while the legacyquel Jay and Silent Bob Reboot is also available through such means, as well as currently being streamed on Prime Video with membership.
