A Unique Experience
Growing up, I would comfort-watch Drew Barrymore movies with the same intensity as most people reach for their favourite pillow; yet it never crossed my mind that one day I would observe the inner workings of her new day job. That I would witness the star of my favourite films do everything from tear up in public to squeal with laughter, burp, command a room, and stroke her bloated stomach lovingly in between takes. Yet life has a funny way of circling back to your childhood obsessions, just not in the way you’d expect.
During a recent work trip to New York, I was offered the chance to observe filming of The Drew Barrymore Show, actress Drew Barrymore’s eponymous talk show, which is currently in its sixth season. When I arrived at CBS Studios, I was whisked through security and immediately asked to surrender my phone and place it into a locked bag, all so there would be no chance of secretly documenting what was going on inside these walls.
From watching Drew’s talk show from afar, I knew the audience sat at the back of the studio, high up in bleacher-style seats facing the stage, with a sprinkling of cameras and crew separating them from the host and guest. So I was surprised when a crew member appeared at my side and briskly escorted me to a seat in front of the stage, a large swivel chair that seemed smack bang in the middle of the production chaos.
The Set and Atmosphere
The set comprised a platform featuring a coffee table and a cosy-looking couch, where Drew always curls up with her guest during the show, often throwing her shoes to the ground and clasping her guest’s hands the same way Rose clings to Jack’s frozen, lifeless body at the end of Titanic.
People, mostly clad in black and wearing headsets, were rushing back and forth with the specific kind of energy you only find on a TV set. A place where everything appears to be in a state of perpetual upheaval, yet their to-do list is still getting ticked off with rapid-fire succession.
In the midst of the chaos, a small dog wandered lazily through the set, paying no mind to the people who quickly jumped out of his way as he confidently made himself at home on the stage couch where Oscar winners and pop stars regularly spill their secrets. This dog was acting like he owned the place, which made sense when I discovered that in a way, he very much does. This was Douglas, the beloved dog of Drew Barrymore herself, and his A-list adjacent lifestyle explains why, as Douglas and I watched the excited audience line up to enter the studio, he viewed them with calm disinterest in his eyes. Never once lifting his head from the couch.
Once the audience was seated, an air of excited conversation bubbled up from the stands, which were filled with mostly tourists who had used one of their precious days in New York to take part in the spectacle of this show being filmed. Then, as if an internal alarm had stirred him from his resting place, Douglas lazily descended from the couch and trotted away from the set while a slew of camera crew dragged their equipment out of his way, as the host of the show herself appeared.
The Host’s Presence
The way Drew Barrymore enters a room is both understated and life-altering, all in the same breath. She appeared through a side door and casually strode into the studio, warmly smiling and waving at the crowd in the stands behind me. They quickly erupted into a chorus of unprompted cheers and applause at the sight of the actress, many of them no doubt also growing up watching her on screen.
The energy in the room had shifted, yet Drew looked like she was casually greeting a group of friends, beaming at the horde of strangers the way most people walk into their own birthday party. If she thought it was strange that, as she had made her way to the stage, she had to squeeze past a tall Australian woman sitting in a chair amongst a sea of cameras, Drew didn’t let on. She simply smiled at me and said hello as she moved past, and to this day, I still think about what I would have said to her if the universe had granted us a few mere moments of chat.
Interactions with the Team
Much the same way as you can tell a person’s real personality by how they treat a waiter, more so than how they treat the person they’re sharing a plate of appetisers with, you can always tell the real personality of a famous individual by how they treat their team behind the scenes. So from my perilously close to the stage seat, I was able to spy just beyond the set and the audience area and watch Drew interact with her team as they prepared to start filming.
She hugged every person she came into contact with. She asked about their lives with an emotional intensity usually reserved for parents demanding to know if their child really brushed their teeth. She treated every request like the person in front of her was a genie granting her one last wish, and the wildest part of all is that not one moment of it felt forced. Not one team member recoiled as their famous boss embraced them.
The Guests and Conversations
Drew carried this energy through to the moment where legendary actress Uma Thurman appeared as her first guest. Grasping her hands like a long-lost sister, all while working through more of her deepest insecurities about motherhood and ageing during this on-stage interaction than most people cover during five years of therapy. She carried it through to interviewing Tori Spelling, where the two 90s It Girls reunited on stage, sharing stories about starring in the Scream franchise, going years without being kissed post-divorce, and some secret whispers about friends that only I could half decipher once their mics were turned off. Leading me to lean so far forward in my comfortable prison of a chair that I nearly toppled into their laps.
She carried it at a run into her final interview of the day with musician Lizzo, as they ate a feast of Lizzo’s favourite foods for her birthday and talked about falling in love for the first time. Before Drew careened into the next part of her day, which consisted of a cooking segment transitioning into a chat show segment ( at this point, I was tired just watching her work, and I hadn’t once needed to move from my prison chair). And she carried it through to when an audience member asked her, in between takes, what she remembered about filming ET in 1981.
Now, in media circles, this would have seemed like the most hackneyed of questions to ask. It was also one of the rare instances where a celebrity could have rolled their eyes at a question and nearly gotten away with it. A question she had answered in detail in so many interviews that at the ripe old age of 13, she had to start repeating her answers. Yet Drew paused and considered this question like she had been asked to decipher the meaning of the universe, and she was the only person capable of processing the answer. She gave a long, thoughtful answer, punctuated with moments of humour and reflections that caused a tear to form in her eye (one of many I saw that day) as we watched this 51-year-old woman recount in detail the movie she made at the age of 7 with no hint of repetition.
A Deep Connection
The truth about Drew Barrymore is that she walks around like a raw nerve ending. Whether she’s sharing her menopause symptoms with an audience while unbuttoning her pants to release her bloated stomach, talking about her childhood in a way that other people would describe the most heartbreaking chapter of their favourite book or shedding happy tears of gratitude when she thanked her studio audience for being part of her show, this is a woman who feels everything to a level of intensity that would make the rest of us explode like an asteroid as it enters Earth’s atmosphere.
I must admit that when I heard Drew Barrymore was planning to host a talk show, I felt a twinge of disappointment. Taking this actress away from making movies felt like ripping Michael Jordan away from basketball in his prime, telling Celine Dion she was never allowed to sing another note, or forbidding Brooklyn Beckham from publicly pretending he can cook. Not allowing people to do the one thing that makes them who they are.
But as I finally peeled myself away from the chair that felt like it had been my home longer than my first apartment, rescued my phone from a locked bag, and exited The Drew Barrymore Show set, I changed my mind about the whole thing. That woman needs to be in her own skin, and not that of a fictional character, giving her emotions a place to bubble over in the presence of a daily turnover of people who just want to be in the same room as her, clasping the hands of famous people as they inject a bit of light gooeyness into the world.
