'Star Wars' team remembers Carrie Fisher and we're crying

There's no Star Wars without Carrie Fisher, and everyone who's worked with her knows it.

In a cover story for Vanity Fair, Fisher's colleagues from Star Wars: The Last Jedi (opening in December) recall what it was like to know and work with her, to catch some of the light from a star as bright as Fisher. And though she's in VIII and the saga will continue, there's an Alderaan-sized hole in Star Wars universe.

Fisher filmed her part for Episode VIII -- a more significant role than 2015's The Force Awakens -- but the series' next installment is being totally reworked to account for her absence.

“She was having a blast,” Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy told VF. “The minute she finished, she grabbed me and said, ‘I’d better be at the forefront of IX!’ Because Harrison was front and center on VII, and Mark is front and center on VIII. She thought IX would be her movie. And it would have been.”

Her death still stings longtime friend Mark Hamill, whom she competed with several years ago to see who would be the first to a million Twitter followers.

“I told Carrie, ‘Part of your problem is you write in these impenetrable emojis',' Hamill said in the same story. "Her tweets looked like rebus puzzles.”

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"Maybe it’s a form of denial, but she’s so vibrant in my mind, and so vital a part of the family, that I can’t imagine it without her," he added. "It’s just so untimely, and I’m so angry.”

For more stirring Fisher memories from her Last Jedi family, read below.

John Boyega (Finn), when the trolls tried to bring him down:

She said, ‘Ah, boohoo, who fuckin’ cares? You just do you.' Words like that give you strength. I bore witness in a million ways to her sharing her wisdom with Daisy too.”

Daisy Ridley (Rey), on living unapologetically:

Carrie lived her life the way she wanted to, never apologizing for anything, which is something I’m still learning.  ‘Embarrassed’ is the wrong word, but there were times through it all when I felt like I was … shrinking. And she told me never to shrink away from it—that it should be enjoyed.

Oscar Isaac (Poe):

We did this scene where Carrie has to slap me...I think we did 27 takes in all, and Carrie leaned into it every time, man. She loved hitting me. Rian found such a wonderful way of working with her, and I think she really relished it.”

Writer/director Rian Johnson:

Out of everyone, Carrie was the one I really became friends with and expected to have in my life for years and years. I last saw her in November, at the birthday party that she threw at her house. In a way, it was the perfect final, encapsulating image of Carrie—receiving all her friends in the bedroom, with Debbie holding court in the living room.

Mark Hamill (Luke), as they entered their later years together:

We got to talking about one of our favorite scenes in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, which is when Tom and Huck go to their own funeral, and they’re up in the balcony, hearing their own eulogies. So then I said, ‘Look, if I go first, just promise me you’ll heckle my funeral.’ And she went, ‘Absolutely, if you’ll do the same for me.’ 

The Last Jedi premieres Dec. 15, almost one year after Fisher passed away due to cardiac arrest.