Drew Barrymore has been replaced as the host of the upcoming National Book Awards ceremony in the US due to her decision to resume filming her talk show during the Hollywood writers' strike. The move attracted criticism on social media, and striking writers picketed the recording of her first show in New York.

In a statement, the National Book Foundation, the organisers of the event, said, "The National Book Awards is an evening dedicated to celebrating the power of literature and the contributions of writers to our culture. In light of the announcement that The Drew Barrymore Show will resume production, the National Book Foundation has rescinded Ms. Barrymore's invitation to host the 74th National Book Awards Ceremony."

Also Read | <a href="https://www.wionews.com/entertainment/hollywood/news-explained-is-it-possible-for-talk-shows-to-go-on-amid-strikes-in-hollywood-the-ethical-and-legal-dilemmas-635305">Explained: Is it possible for talk shows to go on amid strikes in Hollywood? The ethical and legal dilemmas</a>

The organisation's priority is to celebrate writers and books, and they expressed gratitude to Barrymore and her team for their understanding of the situation.

Both actors and writers are currently on strike in Hollywood. Barrymore had initially dropped out as the host of the MTV Movie &amp; TV Awards in solidarity with the striking writers.

While Barrymore's show being filmed does not directly affect the actors' strike, as daytime talk shows operate under a different contract renewed in 2022, it's worth noting that the programme employs at least three writers who are members of the writers' guild.

Chelsea White, one of the show's writers, clarified, "The only people I know for sure that are not going back are us three WGA writers." She also said that this issue extends beyond The Drew Barrymore Show and writers, showing support for the broader union's cause within the entertainment industry.

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Drew Barrymore has been replaced as the host of the upcoming National Book Awards ceremony in the US due to her decision to resume filming her talk show during the Hollywood writers' strike.

Drew Barrymore has been replaced as the host of the upcoming National Book Awards ceremony in the US due to her decision to resume filming her talk show during the Hollywood writers' strike. The move attracted criticism on social media, and striking writers picketed the recording of her first show in New York. In a statement, the National Book Foundation, the organisers of the event, said, "The National Book Awards is an evening dedicated to celebrating the power of literature and the contributions of writers to our culture. In light of the announcement that The Drew Barrymore Show will resume production, the National Book Foundation has rescinded Ms. Barrymore's invitation to host the 74th National Book Awards Ceremony." Also Read | Explained: Is it possible for talk shows to go on amid strikes in Hollywood? The ethical and legal dilemmas The organisation's priority is to celebrate writers and books, and they expressed gratitude to Barrymore and her team for their understanding of the situation. Both actors and writers are currently on strike in Hollywood. Barrymore had initially dropped out as the host of the MTV Movie & TV Awards in solidarity with the striking writers. While Barrymore's show being filmed does not directly affect the actors' strike, as daytime talk shows operate under a different contract renewed in 2022, it's worth noting that the programme employs at least three writers who are members of the writers' guild. Chelsea White, one of the show's writers, clarified, "The only people I know for sure that are not going back are us three WGA writers." She also said that this issue extends beyond The Drew Barrymore Show and writers, showing support for the broader union's cause within the entertainment industry. WATCH WION LIVE HERE You can now write for wionews.com and be a part of the community. Share your stories and opinions with us here.

Drew Barrymore dropped as awards show host over decision to resume talk show amid strikes

At a time when almost entire Hollywood is politically charged, actor Drew Barrymore feels she is not political. Barrymore feels she is finding her voice on Instagram, but only regarding things that are not related to politics. 
 
“At my very core belief I am anything but political and then 2020 happened and the whole world changed and we did have something that united all of us, a pandemic, which wasn’t political until it absolutely was political,” Barrymore said, in her chat show.

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“I’ve been finding my voice on Instagram for years, but usually about pretty tame things, beauty, love and fun, positivity and joy but let’s face it social media is now the most powerful thing we have,” she added. 
 
'The Drew Barrymore Show', which she hosts and backs as a producer&nbsp;brings forward positive stories, humour along with celebrity guest interviews.

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“I have a lot of different interests. It’s why I really loved directing because I could go to work and think about the music I loved or casting, production design, editing, writing, art, literature, travel, wonderment, imagination, comedy, chemistry, romance. I could put it all into this one job. And this is exactly what a talk show has the opportunity to do and we can incorporate all of them into the show like cookbook club,” she said previously while talking about the show. 
 
The Drew Barrymore Show airs on Zee Cafe in India. 
 
(With inputs from agencies)

At a time when almost entire Hollywood is politically charged, actor Drew Barrymore feels she is not political. Barrymore feels she is finding her voice on Instagram, but only regarding things that are not related to politics.

At a time when almost entire Hollywood is politically charged, actor Drew Barrymore feels she is not political. Barrymore feels she is finding her voice on Instagram, but only regarding things that are not related to politics. “At my very core belief I am anything but political and then 2020 happened and the whole world changed and we did have something that united all of us, a pandemic, which wasn’t political until it absolutely was political,” Barrymore said, in her chat show. Armie Hammer and his 'sexual fantasies' chats controversy: What we know so far “I’ve been finding my voice on Instagram for years, but usually about pretty tame things, beauty, love and fun, positivity and joy but let’s face it social media is now the most powerful thing we have,” she added. 'The Drew Barrymore Show', which she hosts and backs as a producer brings forward positive stories, humour along with celebrity guest interviews. The most heartbreaking deaths of Bond girls in 007 movies “I have a lot of different interests. It’s why I really loved directing because I could go to work and think about the music I loved or casting, production design, editing, writing, art, literature, travel, wonderment, imagination, comedy, chemistry, romance. I could put it all into this one job. And this is exactly what a talk show has the opportunity to do and we can incorporate all of them into the show like cookbook club,” she said previously while talking about the show. The Drew Barrymore Show airs on Zee Cafe in India. (With inputs from agencies)

Drew Barrymore feels she is 'anything but political'

Oh, the stains. The staaaains! It’s the stains that truly obsess Drew Barrymore.

“I’m a stan for stains,” she said on a recent episode of “The Drew Barrymore Show,” her syndicated talk show that premiered nationally in mid-September. Not that she knew what a “stan”— a portmanteau of “stalker” and “fan” — actually was, which explains why she pronounced it “stand.” Whatever.

Barrymore, 45, was wearing a white lab coat over an olive green shirt, a pussy bow peeking out. Boldly labeled bottles — Laundry Detergent, Club Soda, Hand Soap, Rubbing Alcohol — were lined up on a table. As she told the audience, she’s a mother, and thus constantly rubbing, scrubbing and scouring.

This is a source of enormous pleasure. “I love concocting the perfect solutions, products, combinations, treatments, methodologies,” she said with her signature lisp. She might as well have been Carol Channing in the Gen X classic “Free to Be You and Me.”

But Barrymore wasn’t rhapsodizing about the need to share housework or the evils of advertising. Along with interior design and food, which the show also covers, stain removal is a lifelong passion. She asked viewers to send her their most aggressive soils, and she — actress, producer, director, author, Golden Globe winner, former emancipated minor, three-time ex-wife, two-time mother, beauty entrepreneur and now host — would help them fix it.

Solving these sorts of human disasters is one of several bits on Barrymore’s sunny and frenetic show, “a jolt of optimism in a turbulent time,” as she said in a recent interview.

It was the Monday after Joe Biden’s win was announced, and Barrymore was feeling a bit wistful. People had been partying in the streets all weekend, but she and her two daughters, Olive Barrymore Kopelman, 8, and Frankie Barrymore Kopelman, 6, were out of town and missed the festivities.

“We felt like old fuddy-duddies,” she said. “We were all having FOMO. But I was also processing all weekend. I felt really internal and quiet, and I tried to think about how I could address it on the show.”

This was more challenging than it may sound, because “TDBS,” as it’s called by fans and those who produce the show, is supposed to appeal to everyone. The show is a “safe space,” and as Barrymore said in her four-minute, 38-second opening monologue that morning, “I didn’t want to gloat because I know there are people out there who are hurting.”

She teared up, as she does often. Like when her ex-husband Tom Green, whom she hadn’t seen or spoken to in about 15 years, came on the show and they reminisced. Or when a psychic medium told Barrymore that Will Kopelman, to whom she was married until 2016, had relatives on the Other Side who loved her and considered her a member of the family.

Barrymore, a “little bit of a skeptic who also believes in everything,” bawled. (Kopelman later told Page Six that one of the alleged spirits was alive and well in Boston.)

She Shares, and She Cares

Barrymore, famously, is not only a crier but also a sharer, even before the sharing economy picked up online. She has always been quick to confess her fears, her insecurities; she unspools ribbons of words at record speed. In a recent Instagram post, she told her 13.6 million followers that she’s been eating her stress lately and needed a “brassiere thing” to fit into her pants. “For anyone who has to put an extender on your pants, well, just know — I feel ya,” she said.

Candor has long come naturally to Barrymore. A native Angeleno, she moved to New York six years ago with Kopelman, an art adviser. They had married in 2012 in a “very Jewish” ceremony; their children are being raised Jewish, although Barrymore didn’t officially convert. But she celebrates all the holidays, which makes her … Drewish?

Moving to New York was jarring. East Coast winters felt brutal. And then, in 2016, just when she was kind of getting used to it, she and Kopelman divorced.

“Nothing I’ve ever been through compared to this divorce,” she said. “This was the first big thing that I went through that was involving a few people I care about far more than myself. I was depressed for, like, five years. I just wasn’t coping with it very well.”

Time helped. So does 20 milligrams of Lexapro every day. And so, finally, does this show.

“I don’t know who I would be without this job,” she said. “My kids come first, but I’m so lucky to have everything that I care about or attempt to do in this thing.”

Life’s Cornucopia

So how did America’s favorite extraterrestrial-loving little girl, a veteran of talk shows since childhood who memorably flashed David Letterman on his in 1995, end up with her own? And for that matter, why would she even want to? It’s not like she needs the money.

Well, why not?

Last spring, Elaine Bauer Brooks, executive vice president of development and multiplatform programming at CBS Television Distribution, in Los Angeles, approached her.“I thought, who would be warm and real and charming and have a unique sensibility?” Bauer Brooks said.

When they realized they shared a vision of a friendly, kooky, apolitical show, they moved forward. Preproduction began during lockdown, so they had to regroup. “She said, ‘I want our Plan B to be so good that we forget about our Plan A,’' Bauer Brooks recalled.

Because of the pandemic, there’s no in-studio audience. Instead, Plan B includes “VFF’s,” or virtual friends and family, an interactive virtual audience that allows Barrymore to engage with people as if they were with her in real life. Most guests are beamed in holographic-style, so she’s often talking to an empty chair. Other than a handful of crew members and producers, Barrymore is mainly all by herself in the giant studio.

The show is taped in New York, where it is broadcast live, five days a week. Barrymore wakes up at 4:30 a.m. and works out (“well, that’s wishy-washy”) before arriving at work at 6:45. She and her team write an opening monologue off the news, and then they’re on set by 8:15. The hourlong program starts at 9 a.m. in New York and is syndicated around the country. She spends the rest of the day preparing for the following day. She’s home by about 5:30, when she goes into “mom mode.”

Most of the guests are her adored celebrity pals, like Cameron (Diaz) and Charlize (Theron) and Reese (Witherspoon) and Gwyneth (Paltrow), who was given the task of coming up with a “Drewphemism” for words you can’t always comfortably say on morning network TV like “butt” or “something beginning with v that ends in ‘ina,’” as Barrymore put it.

“Lady bits?” Paltrow offered. “Life’s cornucopia?”

“I mean, it is,” Barrymore said, and they chortled.

The show features civilians, too, like a relationship expert to help people navigate divorce and a financial guru to help talk to kids about money. (Big Bird joined her in mid-November.)

And then there was Jonah Larson, a 12-year-old crocheting prodigy who tried to teach her the craft. Barrymore bumbled through the segment, constantly losing the ends of the yarn.

It was goofy. It was wacky. And it was kind of deliberate.

“I wanted to do the show like a variety comedy,” she said. “I gravitate toward a Julia Child or a Lucille Ball rather than trying to do it perfect. Everything’s going to fall on the floor and be kind of ridiculous.”

‘Exhausting and Fascinating’

It’s easy to poke fun at the over-the-top, Valley Girl-ness of it all, as Chloe Fineman did in an “Saturday Night Live” parody. Barrymore took it good-naturedly, posting on Instagram that she has “loved SNL for as long as i know” — indeed, she has hosted it half a dozen times — and to also have the @thedrewbarrymoreshow brought to the party is so fun.”

She later invited Fineman onto her show, where a mutual admiration session ensued.

“I’m really nervous to meet you. I’m so excited! I’m your biggest fan,” gushed Barrymore, whose mixed-breed rescue puppy, Douglas, had run out to greet Fineman.

“I’m your biggest fan. You’re going to make me cry,” Fineman said.

These are the sorts of conversations for which TDBS has received criticism. Daniel D’Addario wrote in Variety that Barrymore appears to reveal a lot but that she’s very much controlling the narrative; the show, he wrote, too often “defaults to the flat, broad approach of a celebrity who has fought hard, after a childhood exposed to the media’s glare, to keep some part of herself from the public.” Jezebel, which devotes a weekly column to the show, called it an “emotional roller coaster.” (And let’s not look too closely at the ratings.)

But considering the emotional roller coaster of 2020, it may be just what we need as 2021 dawns. It’s fun, if occasionally cringe-inducing, to watch Barrymore try so hard to have fun.

Because let’s be clear: Trying to have fun is work. Barrymore, as an executive producer, weighs in on everything, down to her chic schoolmarm costumes. “I love dressing up for work,” she said.

There are few child stars who go on to such sustained success. Of course, there are few with such a storied name (her grandfather John, great-uncle Lionel and great-aunt Ethel were all stars in their day).

She was only 19 when she helped found her production company, Flower Films, which has produced, among many others, “Charlie’s Angels,” “50 First Dates,” “Never Been Kissed” and “Whip It!,” which she directed and starred in. Most recently, she was a producer and star of the Netflix original series “Santa Clarita Diet.” This on top of Barrymore Brands, whose lifestyle brand, Flower by Drew, includes beauty products, a home line, hair tools and eyewear.

Chris Miller, 51, president of Flower Films, recalled being in huge marketing meetings at Sony for “Charlie’s Angels” back in the late 1990s. “Drew was in her mid-20s at the time and just had such conviction for how those movies should be marketed and sold,” he said. “She knew and understood every detail about the product because she was involved in every aspect of its creation.”

Years later, he said, “she’d be pitching a new lipstick and talking about how she had challenged the engineers to make the cap in a certain way that would not only feel good in your hand but would stay on during a 6-foot drop test.”

Miller has been with her for more than 20 years, as have most of the people in her immediate orbit.

“I’m very grounded in my life. All of my friends are 20 years, some 25 or 30,” she said. “My friends are my first family.”

She is trying to make sure her daughters have a more stable home life than she did. As Barrymore scholars know, she won emancipation from her parents at 14, not long after she went into rehab for drug addiction. She had been institutionalized for a year and a half, which she has since said she needed. Her father, John Drew Barrymore, died in 2004 after a life of substance abuse issues, but her daughters have met her mother, Ildiko Jaid Barrymore, a few times. “We just gauge it year by year,” she said.

She and Kopelman co-parent amicably, Barrymore said. But the divorce is still pretty raw, and she’s still single. As for dating, well, there’s this pandemic. And men never ask her out. “I tried a dating app once, and I just got blown off a lot,” she said. “I’d match with people, and they never followed through.”

She’d like to go on a blind date, though maybe not 50 of them. She’s trying to get to a place where she finds dating “delightful” again. “I just felt so heavy for so long that even the idea of lightening up about the whole thing would be such tremendous growth for me.”

But for the most part, she’s doing just fine on her own.

“I’ve never known this level of contentment,” Barrymore said. “This is new territory for me, and I just don’t want to screw it up.”

Oh, the stains. The staaaains! It’s the stains that truly obsess Drew Barrymore. “I’m a stan for stains,” she said on a recent episode of “The Drew Barrymore Show,” her syndicated talk show that premiered nationally in mid-September.

Oh, the stains. The staaaains! It’s the stains that truly obsess Drew Barrymore. “I’m a stan for stains,” she said on a recent episode of “The Drew Barrymore Show,” her syndicated talk show that premiered nationally in mid-September. Not that she knew what a “stan”— a portmanteau of “stalker” and “fan” — actually was, which explains why she pronounced it “stand.” Whatever. Barrymore, 45, was wearing a white lab coat over an olive green shirt, a pussy bow peeking out. Boldly labeled bottles — Laundry Detergent, Club Soda, Hand Soap, Rubbing Alcohol — were lined up on a table. As she told the audience, she’s a mother, and thus constantly rubbing, scrubbing and scouring. This is a source of enormous pleasure. “I love concocting the perfect solutions, products, combinations, treatments, methodologies,” she said with her signature lisp. She might as well have been Carol Channing in the Gen X classic “Free to Be You and Me.” But Barrymore wasn’t rhapsodizing about the need to share housework or the evils of advertising. Along with interior design and food, which the show also covers, stain removal is a lifelong passion. She asked viewers to send her their most aggressive soils, and she — actress, producer, director, author, Golden Globe winner, former emancipated minor, three-time ex-wife, two-time mother, beauty entrepreneur and now host — would help them fix it. Solving these sorts of human disasters is one of several bits on Barrymore’s sunny and frenetic show, “a jolt of optimism in a turbulent time,” as she said in a recent interview. It was the Monday after Joe Biden’s win was announced, and Barrymore was feeling a bit wistful. People had been partying in the streets all weekend, but she and her two daughters, Olive Barrymore Kopelman, 8, and Frankie Barrymore Kopelman, 6, were out of town and missed the festivities. “We felt like old fuddy-duddies,” she said. “We were all having FOMO. But I was also processing all weekend. I felt really internal and quiet, and I tried to think about how I could address it on the show.” This was more challenging than it may sound, because “TDBS,” as it’s called by fans and those who produce the show, is supposed to appeal to everyone. The show is a “safe space,” and as Barrymore said in her four-minute, 38-second opening monologue that morning, “I didn’t want to gloat because I know there are people out there who are hurting.” She teared up, as she does often. Like when her ex-husband Tom Green, whom she hadn’t seen or spoken to in about 15 years, came on the show and they reminisced. Or when a psychic medium told Barrymore that Will Kopelman, to whom she was married until 2016, had relatives on the Other Side who loved her and considered her a member of the family. Barrymore, a “little bit of a skeptic who also believes in everything,” bawled. (Kopelman later told Page Six that one of the alleged spirits was alive and well in Boston.) She Shares, and She Cares Barrymore, famously, is not only a crier but also a sharer, even before the sharing economy picked up online. She has always been quick to confess her fears, her insecurities; she unspools ribbons of words at record speed. In a recent Instagram post, she told her 13.6 million followers that she’s been eating her stress lately and needed a “brassiere thing” to fit into her pants. “For anyone who has to put an extender on your pants, well, just know — I feel ya,” she said. Candor has long come naturally to Barrymore. A native Angeleno, she moved to New York six years ago with Kopelman, an art adviser. They had married in 2012 in a “very Jewish” ceremony; their children are being raised Jewish, although Barrymore didn’t officially convert. But she celebrates all the holidays, which makes her … Drewish? Moving to New York was jarring. East Coast winters felt brutal. And then, in 2016, just when she was kind of getting used to it, she and Kopelman divorced. “Nothing I’ve ever been through compared to this divorce,” she said. “This was the first big thing that I went through that was involving a few people I care about far more than myself. I was depressed for, like, five years. I just wasn’t coping with it very well.” Time helped. So does 20 milligrams of Lexapro every day. And so, finally, does this show. “I don’t know who I would be without this job,” she said. “My kids come first, but I’m so lucky to have everything that I care about or attempt to do in this thing.” Life’s Cornucopia So how did America’s favorite extraterrestrial-loving little girl, a veteran of talk shows since childhood who memorably flashed David Letterman on his in 1995, end up with her own? And for that matter, why would she even want to? It’s not like she needs the money. Well, why not? Last spring, Elaine Bauer Brooks, executive vice president of development and multiplatform programming at CBS Television Distribution, in Los Angeles, approached her.“I thought, who would be warm and real and charming and have a unique sensibility?” Bauer Brooks said. When they realized they shared a vision of a friendly, kooky, apolitical show, they moved forward. Preproduction began during lockdown, so they had to regroup. “She said, ‘I want our Plan B to be so good that we forget about our Plan A,’' Bauer Brooks recalled. Because of the pandemic, there’s no in-studio audience. Instead, Plan B includes “VFF’s,” or virtual friends and family, an interactive virtual audience that allows Barrymore to engage with people as if they were with her in real life. Most guests are beamed in holographic-style, so she’s often talking to an empty chair. Other than a handful of crew members and producers, Barrymore is mainly all by herself in the giant studio. The show is taped in New York, where it is broadcast live, five days a week. Barrymore wakes up at 4:30 a.m. and works out (“well, that’s wishy-washy”) before arriving at work at 6:45. She and her team write an opening monologue off the news, and then they’re on set by 8:15. The hourlong program starts at 9 a.m. in New York and is syndicated around the country. She spends the rest of the day preparing for the following day. She’s home by about 5:30, when she goes into “mom mode.” Most of the guests are her adored celebrity pals, like Cameron (Diaz) and Charlize (Theron) and Reese (Witherspoon) and Gwyneth (Paltrow), who was given the task of coming up with a “Drewphemism” for words you can’t always comfortably say on morning network TV like “butt” or “something beginning with v that ends in ‘ina,’” as Barrymore put it. “Lady bits?” Paltrow offered. “Life’s cornucopia?” “I mean, it is,” Barrymore said, and they chortled. The show features civilians, too, like a relationship expert to help people navigate divorce and a financial guru to help talk to kids about money. (Big Bird joined her in mid-November.) And then there was Jonah Larson, a 12-year-old crocheting prodigy who tried to teach her the craft. Barrymore bumbled through the segment, constantly losing the ends of the yarn. It was goofy. It was wacky. And it was kind of deliberate. “I wanted to do the show like a variety comedy,” she said. “I gravitate toward a Julia Child or a Lucille Ball rather than trying to do it perfect. Everything’s going to fall on the floor and be kind of ridiculous.” ‘Exhausting and Fascinating’ It’s easy to poke fun at the over-the-top, Valley Girl-ness of it all, as Chloe Fineman did in an “Saturday Night Live” parody. Barrymore took it good-naturedly, posting on Instagram that she has “loved SNL for as long as i know” — indeed, she has hosted it half a dozen times — and to also have the @thedrewbarrymoreshow brought to the party is so fun.” She later invited Fineman onto her show, where a mutual admiration session ensued. “I’m really nervous to meet you. I’m so excited! I’m your biggest fan,” gushed Barrymore, whose mixed-breed rescue puppy, Douglas, had run out to greet Fineman. “I’m your biggest fan. You’re going to make me cry,” Fineman said. These are the sorts of conversations for which TDBS has received criticism. Daniel D’Addario wrote in Variety that Barrymore appears to reveal a lot but that she’s very much controlling the narrative; the show, he wrote, too often “defaults to the flat, broad approach of a celebrity who has fought hard, after a childhood exposed to the media’s glare, to keep some part of herself from the public.” Jezebel, which devotes a weekly column to the show, called it an “emotional roller coaster.” (And let’s not look too closely at the ratings.) But considering the emotional roller coaster of 2020, it may be just what we need as 2021 dawns. It’s fun, if occasionally cringe-inducing, to watch Barrymore try so hard to have fun. Because let’s be clear: Trying to have fun is work. Barrymore, as an executive producer, weighs in on everything, down to her chic schoolmarm costumes. “I love dressing up for work,” she said. There are few child stars who go on to such sustained success. Of course, there are few with such a storied name (her grandfather John, great-uncle Lionel and great-aunt Ethel were all stars in their day). She was only 19 when she helped found her production company, Flower Films, which has produced, among many others, “Charlie’s Angels,” “50 First Dates,” “Never Been Kissed” and “Whip It!,” which she directed and starred in. Most recently, she was a producer and star of the Netflix original series “Santa Clarita Diet.” This on top of Barrymore Brands, whose lifestyle brand, Flower by Drew, includes beauty products, a home line, hair tools and eyewear. Chris Miller, 51, president of Flower Films, recalled being in huge marketing meetings at Sony for “Charlie’s Angels” back in the late 1990s. “Drew was in her mid-20s at the time and just had such conviction for how those movies should be marketed and sold,” he said. “She knew and understood every detail about the product because she was involved in every aspect of its creation.” Years later, he said, “she’d be pitching a new lipstick and talking about how she had challenged the engineers to make the cap in a certain way that would not only feel good in your hand but would stay on during a 6-foot drop test.” Miller has been with her for more than 20 years, as have most of the people in her immediate orbit. “I’m very grounded in my life. All of my friends are 20 years, some 25 or 30,” she said. “My friends are my first family.” She is trying to make sure her daughters have a more stable home life than she did. As Barrymore scholars know, she won emancipation from her parents at 14, not long after she went into rehab for drug addiction. She had been institutionalized for a year and a half, which she has since said she needed. Her father, John Drew Barrymore, died in 2004 after a life of substance abuse issues, but her daughters have met her mother, Ildiko Jaid Barrymore, a few times. “We just gauge it year by year,” she said. She and Kopelman co-parent amicably, Barrymore said. But the divorce is still pretty raw, and she’s still single. As for dating, well, there’s this pandemic. And men never ask her out. “I tried a dating app once, and I just got blown off a lot,” she said. “I’d match with people, and they never followed through.” She’d like to go on a blind date, though maybe not 50 of them. She’s trying to get to a place where she finds dating “delightful” again. “I just felt so heavy for so long that even the idea of lightening up about the whole thing would be such tremendous growth for me.” But for the most part, she’s doing just fine on her own. “I’ve never known this level of contentment,” Barrymore said. “This is new territory for me, and I just don’t want to screw it up.”

Drew Barrymore is keeping it clean