Drew Barrymore apologizes for, but ultimately doubles down on, bringing show back amid strike
Drew Barrymore continues to take responsibility for moving forward with her talk show
Aux News Drew Barrymore
Drew Barrymore understands that “there’s nothing I can do or say in this moment to make it OK” that she decided to return to her show without writers amid the ongoing strike. But she’s going to say a few things about it anyway, namely that one, she’s “deeply” sorry for doing it, and two, she’s still going to do it anyway.
In a video statement posted to social media, Barrymore became emotional comparing the current backlash to the various public traumas she’s lived through. “I know there is just nothing I can do that will make this OK to those that it is not OK with. I fully accept that. I fully understand that,” she said. “There are so many reasons why this is so complex, and I just want everyone to know my intentions have never been in a place to upset or hurt anymore. It’s not who I am. I’ve been through so many ups and downs in my life, and this is one of them.”
Barrymore went on to explain, “There’s a huge question of the why—why am I doing this? Well, I certainly couldn’t have expected this kind of attention, and we aren’t going to 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.”
Reiterating a sentiment from her initial statement, she added, “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.”
There are a few holes in her argument, starting with the fact that the pandemic and the strike are incomparable scenarios. While Barrymore’s show might have been a beacon for viewers as it aired in 2020, its return in 2023 is an active disappointment to some of her fans and especially her employees, like co-head writer Cristina Kinon.
“I personally understand that everybody has to make the best decision for themselves. I know that this show has a crew of hundreds of people who need to be paid, and I understand the perspective of wanting to protect your cast, your crew, and your staff,” Kinon told The Daily Beast in an interview earlier this week. With Barrymore’s eponymous talk show and others that employ WGA members heading back on air, Kinon said “it is frustrating, because it will prolong the strike, and we just want it to end.”
While, as Kinon notes, it’s an entirely valid concern for Barrymore to keep her crew employed, it also means that everyone going to work on the show and all their guests have to cross a picket line to do so. And even though Barrymore has insisted multiple times now that the show will be “in compliance” with the strike by not having any written material, moving forward without its writers means the show is replacing the work of its writers one way or another.
Barrymore was at pains to reiterate that returning to the show was her choice: “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,” she 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.”
Barrymore should accept responsibility for the decision to move forward; after all, like the late-night talk show hosts, she could come up with alternate means to pay her staff’s salaries during the strike. However, her decision to be the sole person to “own” this choice puts her in the precarious position of shielding the AMPTP from its responsibility for creating the conditions that caused the strike in the first place. With two concurrent Hollywood strikes going on—and Barrymore is a member of one of the guilds striking—it’s a curious choice to martyr herself in this situation. (“if CBS is threatening to cancel, you should publicize that!” tweeted Last Week Tonight writer Liz Hynes.)
Last and least important: What are “realistic times”? Aren’t all times, by nature of being real, realistic ones? This is a case where a writer might have come in handy.
45 Comments
A Hollywood celebretard wanting something both ways…what else is new?
“we aren’t going to break rules and we will be in compliance”That should be enough to shut the bs criticism she has taken over this.
What a manipulative, egomaniacal shitbag. Stand in solidarity with labor!
I would add selfish and short-sighted to her flaws. I’m sure we can think of more.
Stupid, opportunistic, naive, ego-centric, insensitive? More?
Greedy and stupid; a losing combination
Jillian Russell-Wilcox?
I don’t know who that is, but OK by me.
A character of low IQ she played on Family Guy.
Never knew she had a last name, let alone two of them!
No!
I need one of these articles to explain to me why this isn’t OK but we were all kinda chill with and actually loved the Talk Shows in 2008 when they came back without writers. That was some of Conan’s best work.
I’ve heard a lot of conflicting info, but it sounds like the rules changed. It was still frowned upon but it was allowed.
Plenty of folks have broken it down in plenty of articles and comments sections, but that will never stop the “but 2008!” to help defend people who cross picket lines. I mean you could’ve just googled instead of posting, right? So go do that and you’ll get why.
I did google, but the thing about googling is sometimes you just don’t get the right results based on the exact 90 questions you tried. So thank you for not helping.
This was the first result I got when I searched for “did late night cross picket line 2008″https://www.pajiba.com/tv_reviews/during-the-200708-strike-david-letterman-was-the-only-latenight-host-who-didnt-scab.phpThe comments add even more relevant info.
Thanks. It didn’t occur to me to search specifically for 2008 without including modern context.
.
Okay here’s the deal. This is much different than 2008 for two reasons, one is streaming and the other is AI.
Streaming’s model is broken. Studios know it, unions know it. Currently it’s unprofitable. Long story short, you know how Facebook lost money for about a decade just so they could get billions of people to sign up for Facebook and then start turning a profit? There’s no Facebook of streaming. There’s tons of facebooks of streaming competing for the same customers and these facebooks charge you a monthly fee. There’s no way every streamer can get billions of people on every one. They peaked during the pandemic where all you could do was binge watch streaming. And we aren’t going back to pandemic binge watching. You ever wonder why movies come to streaming, in some cases a month after release in the theaters these days? Because studios are canablizing theaters to get you to sign up for streaming. In many cases high quality movies that should be in theaters go directly to streaming. Broadcast TV is dying because studios want you to sign up for streaming and are canabilizing TV to put shows on their streaming app. All the while they need to create more content tomorrow than today to keep you signing up because a season of episodes can be binged immediately. And this is all studio’s choice, they saw what Netflix was doing and instead of letting them be the Facebook of streaming and selling content to that, every studio needed a streaming service.
The model is broken, studios know it, and unions know it. But the studios want the actors and writers to sacrifice to make streaming profitable, instead of both parties. And the unions are already at a disadvantage, their last contract was geared toward Movies and Broadcast tv, because that’s where the money came from. Streaming was minor. So their contract didn’t contain many of the perks of movies and tv. Residuals isn’t really a thing for streaming. So that means studios can profit from showing their work as many times as they want. The actor or writer sees none of those profits. Seasons of shows used to be 24 episodes. Now it’s 10, which cuts into their salaries. There’s other issues where writers have to write a whole season first in the hopes it gets picked up before they are hired. Because studios just need content and they don’t want to have to pay every writer they commission to create content. Salaries have dropped because again, they need content. Lots more, but this is nothing like 2008.
Now let’s talk about AI. Basically they want to use AI to do writer’s jobs. The writers want to negotiate AI protections in this contract. The studios want to have a yearly catch up on AI and just see where this goes. I think you can see why that was unacceptable to the writers. For the actors, the studios want to scan their likeness and use it forever. They pay the actor once, and that’s it. They can use the actor as a background character in a coffee shop or football stand whatever. They’ve already started doing this, getting actors to sign up for this. Now you might say, well background actors, maybe that job shouldn’t exist. But like that’s how big name actors get their start. It would be gutting the industry of talent if instead of hiring a 100 background extras for a scene, they just use AI. And the actors you know, that’s a tiny slice of actors in the biz. If you ever watched Seinfeld, they often meet in a coffee shop, you probably never pay attention to all the other people walking and doing stuff in the coffee shop. But they create atmosphere, and you’d notice if the 4 main characters were only in the coffee shop by themselves. Background actors are in all your favorite movies and tv, you don’t notice them and perhaps you’ve seen a certain background actor across multiple movies, just silently creating the illusion of life for you. 85 percent actors make less than 25 K not enough to qualify for union healthcare. Which means even more make like 40 K and other amounts nowhere near millions. So when you see a big name millionaire actor who’s made it speaking out for the strike, they aren’t doing it for themselves, they are doing it for the 90+ percent that make nowhere near what they do.
Anyways I’m not an actor or a writer. I’m an animator. The strikes are affecting the jobs available to people like me. And we have a very weak union, the vast majority of us aren’t in it. We can ill afford these strikes right now. We have salaries like 40 K. I know people that are working on shows, huge hits that make way less than 40 K, like McDonald’s wages. But be wary of people like Drew Barrymoore who say the show must go on, that they are looking out for the many people in this industry that are not actors and writers. That they are hurting us with these strikes. They are using us a pawns to justify them going against the unions. We face the same problems with streaming too. And we have the same issues with AI. In fact actors and writers are negotiating over AI. AI is legally murky territory because governments haven’t yet regulated it. Despite that Disney is moving forward with AI. They used AI for the creation of the title sequence of Marvel’s Secret Invaders. Just replaced a bunch of artists on that with AI…
Anyways we need to actors and writers to set precedent around these issues because it will affect how much leverage we have to fight for the same things. Yeah the strikes suck. But like if I’m not gonna have a job in 5 years, 1 year, 6 months because the actors and writers caved and the studios went full steam into AI and replaced us to make streaming profitable with no sacrifices on their end like studio’s lavish CEO pay compensation, then what does it matter anyways. Also the Culinary union is striking over AI protections in Nevada. That’s hospitality nothing to do with entertainment. I hope you see with AI that this not as our fight but humanity’s fight. If you stand with us, I promise we’ll stand with you. That’s all I got. Sorry for the two long posts.
SCAB.See also: Bill Maher.
Maher always offends woketards.
Sheesh. Ashton Kutcher released the better apology today, and he defended a fucking rapist while running a charity for rape victims.
She’s not forcing anyone back to work. Anyone who wants to keep striking is free to do so. She doesn’t owe anyone a thing.
Great sociopathic “libertarian” response. I got mine, so screw you!
That’s a pretty well-known troll. Just ignore it.
Great. She can enjoy the fallout, then.
And may her reputation as a scab follow her until her last days on Earth.“ No man has a right to scab as long as there is a pool of water deep enough to drown his body in, or a rope long enough to hang his carcass with.”No sympathy for scabs, not ever.
Abort yourself.
Nepo babies aren’t likely to GAF about anyone else in the business. The least likely, I’d think.
Fuck you, you delusional scab. No one “needs” your jerk off show.
“I wanted to do this, because as I said, this is bigger than me and there are other people’s jobs on the line.”I mean, yeah – lots of them on the picket line and their production staff as well. Speaking of producers – she is one of the producers and the creator of this show. I guarantee that CBS said “get back to work or you won’t have a show when this is over” and Drew clicked her heels.On the other hand…”Kinon said “it is frustrating, because it will prolong the strike.”No, if this happens with more shows it could break the strike.
Classic YouTuber apology.“Normie” backdrop for relatability: ✅No discernible makeup (while totally wearing waterproof makeup for the point in the script when she’s cued to cry): ✅Dressed down for relatability: ✅Word salad: ✅A version of “I guess some of you chose to be offended” ✅Crying: ✅
Video now taken down once it drowned in the sea of backlash when it hit the real world: ✅
Classic woketard rant. Unintelligible
Someone was mentioning contract obligations, but she never mentions those, so I don’t know that they’re relevant?
she may have signed an NDA (or signed a contract for more money to do the show alongside a signed the NDA, not explaining it away, but might be why she isn’t mentioning any external pressures).
I suppose I’d have to learn why production contracts would have NDAs on the existence of the contract itself. Would folks knowing about it somehow bring harm to the image of the production?
I do contract law, we’ll attach NDAs as part of a caveat to lots of agreements (e.g. you break confidentiality, you’re in breach, we’ll sue).
Oh, and fyi, while I post from the greys, there’s another grey here that gets brought out occasionally, but who frequented The Root back in the comment days. Just so we know who this is, even though he rolled a new account under an old name:
Da Poot shut down da comments!
She apologizes worse than my parents
Good for Drew. Piss off Union woketards!
After God had finished the rattlesnake, the toad, and the vampire, He had some awful substance left with which He made a scab. A scab is a two-legged animal with a corkscrew soul, a waterlogged brain, and a combination backbone made of jelly and glue. Where others have hearts, he carries a tumor of rotten principles.When a scab comes down the street, men turn their backs and angels weep in heaven, and the devil shuts the gates of hell to keep him out. No man has a right to scab as long as there is a pool of water deep enough to drown his body in, or a rope long enough to hang his carcass with. Judas Iscariot was a gentleman compared with a scab. For betraying his Master, he had character enough to hang himself. A scab hasn’t.Esau sold his birthright for a mess of pottage. Judas Iscariot sold his savior for thirty pieces of silver. Benedict Arnold sold his country for a promise of a commission in the British Army. The modern strikebreaker sells his birthright, his country, his wife, his children, and his fellow men for an unfulfilled promise from his employer, trust, or corporationSolidarity wins.-Jack London
However, her decision to be the sole person to “own” this choice puts
her in the precarious position of shielding the AMPTP from its responsibility for creating the conditions that caused the strike in the first place.
Wow.