Drew Barrymore has responded to backlash she received since announcing that her talk show would resume production despite the ongoing SAG-AFTRA strikes.
“I certainly couldn’t have expected this kind of attention,” Barrymore said in a video shared to social media. “We aren’t gonna break rules, and we will be in compliance. I wanted to do this because as I said, this is bigger than me, and there are other people’s jobs on the line.”
As The Hollywood Reporter points out, The Drew Barrymore Show is produced and distributed by CBS Media Ventures, is part of Paramount Global — one of the media companies WGA writers are currently striking against. So, in order to resume production, Drew will resume without any writing or literary work, in a vein similar to The View.
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“I don’t exactly know what to say because sometimes when things are so tough, it’s hard to make decisions from that place. So all I can say is that I wanted to accept responsibility, and now I don’t have a PR machine behind this. My decision to go back to the show — I didn’t want to hide behind people,” Barrymore said. “I won’t polish this with bells and whistles and publicists and corporate rhetoric. I’ll just stand out there and accept and be responsible.”
She concluded: “Since launching live in a pandemic, I just wanted to make a show that was there for people in sensitive times, and I weighed the scales and I thought if we could go on during a global pandemic, and everything that the world experienced through 2020, why would this sideline us? So I want to just put one foot in front of the other and make a show that’s there for people regardless of anything else that’s happening in the world because that’s when I think we all need something that wants to be there being very realistic in very realistic times.”
See the full video below.
Season 4 of The Drew Barrymore Show is slated to premiere on September 18th. Any actor who appears as a guest will have to abide by SAG-AFTRA strike rules, which means not discussing or promoting struck projects.
Read our explainers about the WGA strike and SAG-AFTRA strike.
