Debbie Reynolds’ son Todd Fisher has said his mother did not die of a broken heart but just “left to be with Carrie”.

Fisher said that after hearing about the death of her daughter, Reynolds said ‘I want to be with Carrie.”

“And then she was gone,” he said.

In an ABC News interview that was to air on Friday, Todd Fisher said that his mother joined his sister in death because Reynolds “didn’t want to leave Carrie and did not want her to be alone.”

“She didn’t die of a broken heart,” Fisher said in interview for the programme 20/20.

Reynolds wasn’t inconsolable over her daughter’s death, he said, and instead simply expressed love for her.

Todd Fisher said his mother and sister, actress Carrie Fisher, will have a joint funeral and will be buried together.



He said the actresses will be interred at Forest Lawn-Hollywood Hills, the final resting place of numerous celebrities, including Lucille Ball, Dick Van Patten, Liberace, Florence Henderson, David Carradine and Bette Davis.

No date for the funeral has been set and it will be private, he said. A public memorial is being considered , but no plans have been finalised.

Earlier on Friday, the Los Angeles coroner’s office released Carrie Fisher’s body to her family. Chief of operations Brian Elias says an examination of Fisher was done, but he stopped short of calling it an autopsy and would not provide any details on what tests were done.

Elias said there was no timetable for when an official determination on what killed Fisher would be made.

Todd Fisher said the family wasn’t clear on what coroner’s officials had done during the examination, but was glad his sister’s body had been released to Forest Lawn. “My mother and my sister are together right now,” he said.

Carrie Fisher, 60, an actress and writer who starred as Princess Leia in the original “Star Wars” trilogy, died Tuesday after suffering a medical emergency 23 December aboard a flight from London. Reynolds, 84, an Oscar-nominated actress who shot to fame after starring in “Singin’ in the Rain” at age 19, passed away on Wednesday after being briefly hospitalised.