Pastor Todd Fisher: My Mom, Debbie Reynolds, Wanted to Be With Carrie Fisher

Todd Fisher, son of Debbie Reynolds and brother of Carrie Fisher, says his mother just wanted to be with her daughter.

Reynolds died Wednesday, just one day after her daughter. Reynolds was 84.

“She went to be with Carrie. In fact, those were the last words that she spoke this morning,” he told E! News. “More specifically, she said that she really, she was under a lot of stress. … She held it together beautifully, obviously, for the last couple of days, but she was under a lot of emotion and stress from the loss [of Carrie] and it’s pretty much what triggered this event.” 

People magazine reports Reynolds, star of Singin’ in the Rain and Tammy and the Bachelor, attended a Presbyterian church in Hollywood. 

Todd’s road to spiritual awakening was full of odd twists. His mother attended a Presbyterian church in Beverly Hills, and his father is Jewish. (His parents divorced when Todd was 3, and Reynolds married shoe-store magnate Harry Karl a year later.) As children, Carrie and Todd were encouraged to sample both Christianity and Judaism and to choose between the two. “But as far as I was concerned,” Todd remembers, “they were both boring.”

Todd became a charismatic church leader shortly after Carrie’s catapult to fame with the Star Wars franchise. He started his own church in his mother’s studio in the ’80s, but the congregation rapidly outgrew the space. 

“We preach the truth, and if that means poking fun at some of the traditions—well, hey, that’s just part of it. Jesus spent his career exposing the Pharisees and Sadducees because they weren’t worshipping God, they were worshipping traditions. Those people are still with us today,” he told People in 1984.

Todd appears to be the most outspoken about his faith in the family trio.

Carrie described her faith: “I love the idea of God, but it’s not stylistically in keeping with the way I function. I would describe myself as an enthusiastic agnostic who would be happy to be shown that there is a God.” 

Please pray for the Reynolds-Fisher family during this heartbreaking time. {eoa}