Drew Barrymore’s Creative Force Is Too Big for One Platform to Contain

Drew Barrymore is on the floor. It’s a weekday afternoon in her Manhattan apartment, and the Emmy-winning actress, producer, writer and entrepreneur—who is also Adweek’s Creator Visionary of the Year—has eschewed her sofas in favor of the carpet. For fans of The Drew Barrymore Show, this is a familiar habit. Throughout the syndicated show’s three-season run (distributor CBS Media Ventures has already re-upped for Season 4) Barrymore has sat, lain and even rolled on the floor during exchanges with George Clooney, Eddie Murphy and Hillary and Chelsea Clinton, among others. Indeed, even by the vacillating standards of daytime talk, Barrymore has thrown the rule book out the window: dressing as Glinda the Good Witch, interviewing an American Girl doll and cooking alongside a lizard named Jeremy. Still reminiscent of the 7-year-old Americans first met in 1982 as Gertie in the Steven Spielberg blockbuster movie E.T., Barrymore (now 48) runs the behavioral gamut from delight to astonishment, giggles to tears. A talk show, however, is just one product of a creative force that’s too big for TV to contain. These days, Barrymore also runs her own magazine and lines of cosmetics and home furnishings. She’s an ambassador for multiple brands including Garnier and Quorn. Barrymore’s unpredictable Instagram posts—including a viral one of her frolicking in the rain—have won her a following of 17 million. In a rare hour of quietude, Barrymore sat down with Adweek—well, reclined on the aforementioned floor—to talk about her show, her creative process and life in the public eye. (This interview has been edited for length and clarity.) Adweek: The reason we’re sitting down for a talk is that you’re our Creator Visionary for 2023. So, first off, congratulations. Drew Barrymore: I was just excited to be on the Adweek radar. I’m in shock. I’m so grateful. Your entire career has been creative in terms of acting and producing and, now, your talk show and the brands that carry your name. Do you see yourself as an inherently creative person, or is there some other term you associate with what you do? I, unfortunately, lack in objectivity about myself. I’m terrified of seeing myself as anything. I don't know what I am. I don't know what anybody thinks, and I don’t want to know. We live in a world where everybody has access to what everybody thinks of them. Unfortunately, it can swing way too far the other way for me where I'm not sure if I'm letting all the good in. [But] I know that I am no ladder-climbing, ambitious, driven person [in the traditional sense]. I really love working. If I see something that I wish existed and I can't find it, I want to make it or do it. Those things really light my fire. And then once the fire starts, it's really hard to extinguish. Well, that’s a good segue to your talk show. In 2020, you said you were taking a hiatus from acting because you wanted to spend more time with your two daughters. So why did you say yes to doing TV? The hours seemed so much more civilized than the hours of filmmaking. Really? Yeah. There’s a huge difference. In film, you usually work a minimum of 12-16 hours a day. And you never know where you’re going to be, you never know what time you’ll start, you never know if you're going to be on nights or days—which, before I had kids, was the best life I could have ever known. I loved the expanse on the horizon, how you get to see the world and different people. It's the most fulfilling thing I had ever known. But when I had kids, it turned into uncertainty. Drew Barrymore and Her Feathered Friend Star in Quorn’s Quirky Campaign Has the show evolved into something greater than you expected at first? It’s getting there and it’s going better. For the first few years, it was not in that place, and it took a long time for me to find my way in it. I actually have never felt more insecure, self-doubting and in a state of constant self-flagellation as I have on this job. It's been the hardest one of my life. Why? I think it’s because I don’t have a character to hide behind. The films and the characters made me feel like I could do anything I set my mind to. And this was just me. It was a really sickening feeling for a long time—so much so that I couldn't sustain this level of self-doubt. And I would have to either let it go or stop doing the show, because this wasn’t the point of doing the show. But once I got out there live … And you’d pushed really hard for a live format. It was half an itch that I wanted to scratch. But more importantly, I felt the state of the world demanded [it]. You mean, you didn’t want to be sitting in this apartment, hosting a TV show. I was never going to do a pandemic show. Were you trying to draw some energy out of a studio environment that you couldn’t get from your sofa? Yes. I was like, there's no way I'm ever doing that. We’ve got to get people out of their homes, into a destination. So let's make this big and beautiful. Let's bring in people on green screen. There'll be no Zoom boxes. And it doesn't matter if I'm sitting there by myself. If we do this in real time, we’ll be able to be respectful to the year and unprecedented nature of what we're living through. I felt it was the most respectful and responsible thing to do. I actually have never felt more insecure, self-doubting and in a state of constant self-flagellation as I have on this job. … I think it’s because I don’t have a character to hide behind.Drew Barrymore Daytime TV is kind of weird right now because a number of marquee shows have ended their runs. Ellen and Dr. Oz signed off in 2022. Dr. Phil and Rachael Ray are throwing in the towel this year. Does that exodus freak you out, or do you see it as an opportunity? My first thought is that I'm excited that they hopefully know what they want for themselves. There's clearly a revolving door. If I could be with the other [hosts] who are doing it right now—part of that new guard, if you will—I am excited. Because I just want to be here really badly. My therapist would not prefer me to be so attached, but I am attached, for better or worse. When I watch your show, one of the things that surprises me is how vulnerable you allow yourself to be. You did an entire episode where you had no idea in advance who your guests would be. You even interviewed your ex-husband Tom Green without having seen him in person for 15 years. Why do you do scary things to yourself? It’s funny—none of that is the stuff that scares me. Why not? It just seems like an amazing opportunity to explore, figure things out, check in with people, have conversations where you just take the armor off. But I don't think that comes about by just sitting around and wishing and hoping for it. It comes with cultivation of the relationships. And believe me, on the other side of that coin, I’ll beat the shit out of myself if I thought I’d made something too much about me and not enough about that. If I think I crossed that line, I eviscerate myself, and I hate it. I’m working on it. But it was why I asked Cameron and Lucy to do the first show. Cameron Diaz and Lucy Liu from the 2000 film continuation of the Charlie’s Angels franchise—which you starred in and co-produced. I thought, what if I started out with people I’ve been through everything with in life? We still have a piece of professional work to show that we’re all linked by and proud of, but we’ve moved on. We’ve become mothers, we’ve gone through breakups and relationships and everything together. And I was like, what if friendship could be at the forefront of this [episode]? And we got to show off our technology by Cameron being beamed in and out. Lucy was in the studio. And we just got to have this amazing conversation. I'm very fortunate to have [colleagues] who believe in the ideas. I could have worked with people who were like, “We don't want your exes on—we want this to be a traditional talk show.” You have a huge social media presence. The show counts 3.7 million followers on TikTok, and you have more than 17 million followers on Instagram. But you’ve also expressed reservations about these platforms’ pernicious effects on kids. Do you have an uneasy relationship with social media? And if so, how can you manage to maintain an authentic presence on it? I've always kept my kids out of it. I struggled. How do you be yourself with cutting off the most important thing in your life, which is my kids? So that has been tough. I really want to bring them on the journey. [But] I can't and I won't with my kids. It's OK to have a boundary. I assume you have people who help you post all the content that you do? Only recently. I now work with this incredible woman who I love but, no, before that, I was manning it all by myself. … because you just have so much extra time on your hands. That’s why I sought somebody out. Because I was drowning, and then I wasn’t doing it. I'm one of the most uncalculated humans you'll ever meet. … I've just tried to put one foot in front of the other.Drew Barrymore You’re running two big retail brands right now: Beautiful by Drew Barrymore, a collection that includes the “Drew Chair,” and Flower Beauty, your cosmetics line. Beautiful is this sort of mental game of how you function within your home. And Flower is more like how you engage with yourself in the beauty space. With so much on your plate, how can you stay meaningfully involved in your brands? Consumers can get cynical about celebrity brands—charging that it’s just name slapping. How do you wrangle it? I moved everyone I work with in brands into the studio so I see them every day and I work with them every day. And we do the magazine at the studio as well. And then when we have to work outside of the studio—because we're not there those days—everyone will come here [to my apartment.] It’s a tremendous amount of work. But if you're not involved and invested and you don't make the time, not only do you risk that lack of a relationship with the people you’re trying to make it for, I would just be dissatisfied and hard on myself for not putting in the time. And customers might also say, “Oh, this is just a cash grab. She’s just trying to get 20 bucks from me for lipstick.” I assume that’s not what you’d want people to think. Not at all. Also, I hate email, but group texting is my life. Everyone [involved in my brands] is not only on big group texts, I've combined a lot of the group texts. So, silos are not happening. Everybody is talking to each other. And everybody is aware of each endeavor that we're working on. So if you're doing a talk show and a magazine and these brands, how do you bring everyone together? How do you get communication ideas and flow? We started doing episodes of the show that the entire hour is about the latest issue. You’ve also done advertising spots for other brands like Pluto TV, Garnier and meatless brand Quorn. How do you decide what brands to work with? That’s a good question. Garnier is a very deep partnership. I’ll be working with them to promote [that] they’re cruelty-free. Meaning, a brand has to line up with—and I know this is an overused term—your personal values? Yeah, absolutely. What [we’re] doing is constantly tentacling everyone in. So, Garnier buys into the magazine; we’ll do integrations on the show. I do campaigns with them. It's bigger than, “Yeah, I work with this brand.” We try to grow and collaborate and coordinate. Because of E.T., you were a movie star at age 7, and you had to grow up really fast. So many childhood actors were destroyed by that process. For you, there were certainly consequences—but you weren’t destroyed. In fact, you’re enjoying a renaissance right now. How have you been able to persevere, to keep reinventing yourself? I promise you, I'm one of the most uncalculated humans you'll ever meet. I don't know. That is my answer. I don't know. I've just tried to put one foot in front of the other. And I'm desperate to become a better person, a better mom—someone that I can count on. There's been so many times in my life where I have been disappointed in myself. And I don't want to live in that state. So I keep trying to figure things out. Drew’s Creative Universe Her reach extends across media, retail and brand partnerships. Barrymore appears in brand campaigns for Pluto (1) and Garnier (2), and her Beautiful by Drew kitchen line (3) expanded into furniture with the Drew Chair (4), while The Drew Barrymore Show (5) has been renewed for Season 4. Barrymore’s time in front of the camera represents only a tiny portion of her creative reach. Her Flower Films production company, which she founded in 1995 with business partner Nancy Juvonen, has been behind films like Never Been Kissed, 50 First Dates and the Charlie’s Angels movies. Since 2020, she has put her acting career on hold for The Drew Barrymore Show, her syndicated daytime talk show that will kick off its fourth season this fall. In summer 2021, she launched Drew magazine, a quarterly lifestyle publication produced with Bauer Media Group, featuring stories about travel, food, beauty, home and work, alongside Barrymore-authored stories. After serving as CoverGirl’s co-creative director and brand ambassador in 2007, Barrymore launched her cosmetics line, Flower Beauty, in 2013. In 2021, she rolled out a kitchen line called Beautiful by Drew Barrymore, which recently expanded into furniture with the Drew Chair. Produced in conjunction with Shae Hong, founder and CEO of Made by Gather, the Beautiful by Drew Barrymore products are available at Walmart. In addition to her own brands, Barrymore has brand partnerships with Garnier, Walmart Vision Center, Grove Collaborative (in which she owns a stake), Pluto TV, Bingo Blitz and meat-alternative brand Quorn, where she also serves as "Chief Mom Officer." —R.K Split Decision The format change that saved The Drew Barrymore Show. This season, The Drew Barrymore Show is averaging 1.2 million viewers each day—but that popularity was hardly immediate. CBS Media Ventures execs greenlit Barrymore’s show before anyone knew what Covid-19 was and, when the first episode aired on Sept. 14, 2020, America was just beginning to emerge from lockdown. At the 9,000-square-foot CBS Broadcast Center, Barrymore presided over empty audience seats and, worse still, a vacant stage. CBS-VFX’s “virtual talkshow” technology shot Barrymore’s guests at their locations on green screen and digitally grafted them onto the set to create what CBS termed a “big show feel.” Even so, average viewership in that first season limped in at just 694,000 per episode. While Season 2 finally let a live audience inside, it would take bigger changes to deliver the goods. In April 2022, CBS decided to produce the show as two freestanding, half-hour episodes that local stations could run as an hourlong program or air them separately. That flexibility did the trick: The new format “has been an undeniable success,” CBS Media Ventures said in a statement in January, as it renewed the show for the 2023-2024 TV season. “Ratings have grown 70% year to year and, creatively, the show is better than ever.” —R.K. This story is part of Adweek’s The Creatorverse digital features package, which spotlights the creator economy: the people who make up the industry’s new content royalty, and the marketers and agencies that collaborate with them to drive next-level engagement for their brands.