NEW YORK — Paul Simon and Carrie Fisher’s brief marriage in the 1980s was, in the folk icon’s words, “mistakes after mistakes after mistakes,” as seen in footage shown in the new documentary series about the co-founder of Simon & Garfunkel.
Paul Simon fans are getting a peek behind the curtain of his “exhausting” marriage to the late Carrie Fisher.
The Grammy winner, 82, raised in Queens, met the “Star Wars” icon while filming the first installment of the franchise. They married in 1983 and divorced the following summer.
“I mean, what was I thinking? Certainly not thinking about life, you know, what you really like, you have to stop doing that,” the Simon & Garfunkel co-founder says in an old interview featured in the MGM+ documentary, “In Restless Dreams: The Music of Paul Simon.”
Noting that the “When Harry Met Sally” actress “was much more showbiz oriented” as the daughter of movie legend Debbie Reynolds and singer Eddie Fisher, Simon said she “was fine with that.”
“She was used to it,” he said. “She was used to a lot of press and stuff like that. It wasn’t intimidating or anything like that. She knew how to manipulate it and make it work for her. She was very good at it and I wasn’t.”
The singer-songwriter added that “marriage is… a difficult thing to do.”
“Not everything can happen at once, not everything is a media event. All kinds of mistakes, after mistakes, after mistakes,” Simon said. “I realized that I could exhaust myself… I could exhaust myself because of an emotional disorder.”
The divorce wasn’t the end of the road for Simon and Fisher, who spent years in an on-again, off-again romance.
Fisher, who died after suffering a heart attack before Christmas 2016, was remembered by Simon at the time as “a special, wonderful girl”.
“Yesterday was a horrible day,” he tweeted shortly after her death. “It’s too soon”.
In 1992, Simon married singer Edie Brickell, with whom he has three grown children. Through her relationship with talent agent Bryan Lourd, Fisher had one daughter, “Booksmart” star Billie Lourd.
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