In a rare public statement, the actress wrote of the decision to not invite her aunts and uncle to the ceremony: “Their actions were very hurtful to me at the most difficult time in my life.”

Billie Lourd has long preferred to keep her personal life as private as possible, but the actress has taken the rare step of releasing a public statement to quiet family discord by offering her side of the story ahead of a special ceremony honoring her late mother, Carrie Fisher.

In a statement received by The Hollywood Reporter, Lourd first apologizes to “anyone reading this for feeling the need to defend myself publicly,” adding that she’s only doing so after being “publicly attacked” by her family members in statements given to TMZ and posted on social media. She then confirms that she did not invite Fisher’s brother, Todd, and half-sisters, Joely and Tricia Leigh Fisher, to Thursday’s Hollywood Walk of Fame ceremony, and that “they know why.”

“Days after my mom died, her brother and her sister chose to process their grief publicly and capitalize on my mother’s death, by doing multiple interviews and selling individual books for a lot of money, with my mom and my grandmother’s deaths as the subject. I found out they had done this through the press. They never consulted me or considered how this would affect our relationship,” reads Lourd’s statement. “Though I recognize they have every right to do whatever they choose, their actions were very hurtful to me at the most difficult time in my life. I chose to and still choose to deal with her loss in a much different way.”

The family suffered tremendous loss when the beloved Star Wars icon passed away in Los Angeles at age 60 on Dec. 27, 2016. One day later, Fisher’s mother, the legendary performer Debbie Reynolds, passed away at age 84. On June 5, 2018, Todd Fisher published the memoir My Girls: A Lifetime With Carrie and Debbie. Joely Fisher published a memoir as well, Growing Up Fisher: Musings, Memories and Misadventures in 2017. For her part, Lourd leads a relatively private life, preferring to share pieces of it via Instagram where she sometimes posts tributes to her mother and grandmother on anniversaries, birthdays and special occasions. Her interviews are few and far between, and typically tied to acting projects like the recent Ticket to Paradise.

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