Although Mark Hamill said just two weeks ago that he and his former co-stars hadn't yet reached a deal to reprise their roles in Star Wars: Episode VII, Carrie Fisher has now unequivocally confirmed her involvement in the new trilogy.

In an interview with Palm Beach Illustrated, the 56-year-old actress and novelist was asked whether she could confirm she'll reprise her role as Princess Leia. Fisher's answer was a simple "yes."

Directed by J.J. Abrams from a script by Michael Arndt, Episode VII is targeted for release in 2015, inaugurating a new Star Wars trilogy under the Disney/Lucasfilm banner, and paving the way a series of standalone films focusing on individual characters (the first two are believed to center on Boba Fett and a young Han Solo).

Fisher joined Hamill in August for a meeting with George Lucas, who told them about plans for a new trilogy, more than two months before the Disney sale was announced. Hamill recently said he presumes the new films will focus on the children of the original characters, with Luke Skywalker stepping into the role of Obi-Wan Kenobi.

"When I found out [while making the original trilogy] that ultimate good news/bad news joke – the good news is there's a real attractive, hot girl in the universe; the bad news is she's your sister – I thought, 'Well, I'm going to wind up like Sir Alec [Guinness],'" Hamill recalled last month. "'I'm going to be a lonely old hermit living out in some kind of desert igloo with a couple of robots.'"

So how does Fisher envision Leia? "Elderly," she told Palm Beach Illustrated. "She’s in an intergalactic old folks’ home [laughs]. I just think she would be just like she was before, only slower and less inclined to be up for the big battle."

And when she says "just like she was before," she means it: "The bagel buns and the bikini, because probably she has sundowners syndrome. At sundown, she thinks that she’s 20-something. And she puts it on and gets institutionalized."

UPDATE (2:30 a.m. March 7): Fisher's representative tells CNN the actress was joking, saying, "Nothing has been announced."

(via GeekTyrant)