Drew Barrymore is not bringing her show back, after all
After Barrymore decided that producing The Drew Barrymore Show amid two strikes wasn't such a great idea, The Talk followed suit and paused its return
Aux News Barrymore
In another victory for bullying public figures into making better choices, Drew Barrymore has reversed her decision to bring her daytime talk show back amid the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes. Barrymore previously announced The Drew Barrymore Show would return on September 18, replacing her public persona as a relatable person (and definitely not the scion of one of showbiz’s oldest dynasties) with accusations of scabbing. Barrymore now says the show will remain off the air until the strikes end.
“I have listened to everyone, and I am making the decision to pause the show’s premiere until the strike is over,” Barrymore wrote on Instagram. “I have no words to express my deepest apologies to anyone I have hurt and, of course, to our incredible team who works on the show and has made it what it is today. We really tried to find our way forward. And I truly hope for a resolution for the entire industry very soon.”
Last week, Barrymore kicked off a vitriolic and wholly predictable backlash after announcing her show’s return. Since then, the once-benign morning chat show has been a last-minute destination for hot labor summer, with reports of audience members being tossed from Drew Barrymore tapings for being suspected WGA supporters. Elsewhere, Barrymore lost her job as host of the National Book Awards, which rescinded its invitation to Barrymore as she would be an inappropriate MC for an “evening dedicated to celebrating the power of literature and the incomparable contributions of writers to our culture.” Barrymore even doubled down on her decision by apologetically reasserting her position on Friday. The actor has since scrubbed her previous return-related videos from her Instagram.
The aftershocks of her intention to cross the picket line received condemnation from the WGA and its members but also, more destructively, emboldened fellow fickle talk show hosts to follow her lead. After sitting back and allowing Barrymore to fall on the sword, Bill Maher bravely announced his return to TV sans writers, as did The Jennifer Hudson Show and The Talk. However, ever the trendsetter, hours after Barrymore reversed course, The Talk followed suit and paused their return as well.
Update 9/17/23, 6:30 p.m.: Variety reports that The Jennifer Hudson Show has also paused its return.
42 Comments
A lot of people on social media have refused to accept this win and insist on continuing to attack her, and guys, really just stop. What incentive is anyone ever going to have to reverse course from a bad decision like this again if it doesn’t change anything about their reputation? Let’s just focus on how Bill Maher now has his ass hanging out all alone.
ugh, maher is probably going to double down because he’s such a rebel.
Maher is the poster child for “being a contrarian just means you let other people make up your mind for you differently”
Is it the same people or did it shift from people dumping on her for wanting to break the picket lines to those mad that she is supporting unions again?
It’s the same people, at least on my feeds.
Cleanse your feeds.
I don’t want to focus on Bill Maher’s ass.
Exactly. Someone pierced the bubble she lives in (all famous people live in one), they made her extremely aware of the real ramifications of her decision and she reversed course. That’s how it should ideally happen. Forgive, don’t forget, but back off, people.
Its almost like some people call out other people on social media to score internet virtue points and make themselves look good , rather than actually trying to highlight wrongs.
Yeah. You don’t have to congratulate her or anything. She should not have done it in the first place, but also, she did what was asked. What more do people want? I know that rage and anger is the lifeblood of a certain segment of the internet, but enough already.
Take the win? She’s a cunt. And we are not going to forget how awful she is. Never.Let the message be beamed loud and clear: support the WGA or get fucking destroyed. I will take the win, and then burn Bill Maher’s house down. That’s how I take the W.
This is good news for the strikes and amazing news for the rest of us.
Or – more likely – CBS who distributes both shows pulled back on asking where their shows were and decided the bad press wasn’t worth it.
Bill Maher had writers? I thought they just jumbled a bunch of words in a jar and let them fall out
It’s easy to tell when Bill Maher goes off-script. His writer-free podcast is so, so hilariously bad. Tim Heidecker and Fred Armisen recently did a brilliant parody of it that you should absolutely watch on YouTube.Maher is a terrible stand-up, deeply unlikable, and a horrible interviewer – he memorizes a zinger and then tries to navigate the entire conversation around just so he can deliver it – it’s excruciating to watch. Even when his writers give him smart jokes, he delivers them like such an asshole.And I have heard nothing but awful stories about him for decades.
So he’s like Dennis Miller but had a career past 9/11?
Ha. That’s an interesting comparison. One random thing I liked about Dennis Miller was that he used esoteric political references that obviously were intended for the 2% of his audience that were insanely well-read.Don’t get me wrong – Bill Maher has been on the right side of history on many things. I think some people here didn’t really live through the agony of the Bush/ Cheney years, but Jon Stewart emerged as a statesman covering it all – Maher devolved into pettiness, feuds, anger and resentment-politics around 2012.I still think Maher was correct in calling out Howard Stern’s hypocrisy on 9/11; other than that, he’s always been an unattractive, unappealing misogynist who is lost without writers and still openly holds a grudge against all the “stuck-up girls” who wouldn’t sleep with him in high school.
This is accurate, one addition, remember he used to go out with Anne Coulter, so imagine the hate fucking there.
Why did you put that mental image out there? There isn’t enough brain bleach in the world.
I’ve been hearing this comparison all over, and possibly it’s years or modern exposure or whatever, but I never remember Miller being as punchable as Maher.
**APPLAUSE**
This one?Maher weilds a bigger cigar, though D:
Yes! This is pitch-perfect satire. The idiotic, nonsensical word-salad aggressiveness of every single question. The god-awful camera angles, the constant clinking of the glasses, the pathetic attempts to dominate personal space, all while trying to twist everything into an attack on the “woke mind virus” that is the “biggest threat since the Civil War.” And Fred just plays the straight man perfectly.I love when he demands that Fred admit that Portlandia was meant as an intentional and vicious attack on “wokeness” and Armisen keeps politely trying to say that isn’t true.Apparently, this bothered Bill Maher so much that he demanded his producer change the set and the camera angles. I absolutely love knowing that he hated this and took it personally.
Holy shit, I think someone posted a clip of that here recently and either dropped the context or I missed it, because I watched like two minutes and thought Heidecker (who I don’t really follow) must have gone off the right wing cliff. I thought Armisen was just being non-confrontational until he could get away. Seeing it below in context makes a lot more sense now.
That’s really funny. Tim Heidecker is such a master at satire that it can be indistinguishable from the real thing. He and Armisen collaborated to brutally mock every single detail of Bill Maher’s podcast here – to an uncomfortable degree.If you have never seen Heidecker’s Joe Rogan parody on YouTube, you are missing out. It is so pitch-perfect, deadpan and fully committed that I re-watch it every now and then just to remind myself that smart comedians are savagely mocking these idiots. I think it’s the best performance comedy I’ve seen in a decade. Tim never breaks character and it is gloriously brutal.
16:20 – 17:10 mark is peak-Maher. It’s the only time you see Armisen trying not to break character.
Bill Maher truly is the thinking man’s complete fucking moron.
Man, she’s had a rough week.
This also puts a minor twist into the conversation of whether she has a contract (with an NDA) that she needed to honor or face consequences of not doing so.
It’s still possible. The whole thing was so ham-handed it all smacks of someone behind the scenes forcing the situation.
I could accept her return to her show if it was a contract matter, if she said that clearly and did a sub-standard show without writers, but if she has a contract with an NDA that prevents her from discussing its terms in that way she needs much better lawyers.
So anyway, the United Auto Workers are striking, which unlike this strike, might actually affect real people.
This would be an excellent time for Jennifer Hudson to do a concert tour.
Seems to be working well for John Oliver!
She doesn’t tour that much, actually; never has. Not sure why that is, unless her team doesn’t think her voice can handle performing every night for long stretches. She has done Broadway, but only for a few months, and I would think doing a 90-minute show is very different than singing a few songs a night on Broadway.
Her role on Broadway in The Color Purple was supporting and not a difficult sing in the way that Effie in Dreamgirls is (not that she has done that on stage). It was also notable she left the production not long after missing out on a Tony nomination.
It does seem like she’s been chasing the EGOT for some time now (and she’s got it, though the Emmy is a Daytime Emmy and the Tony is for producing, not performing).
You cross picket line, we destroy you. Glad we settled that.As for Barrymore, she did something extraordinary for someone who’s a D-lister. She showed us how awful she is and was able to waste our fucking time. All in a single weekend!
It is extremely disappointing to find Drew Barrymore knuckling under to the union bullies. I hope other hosts who have decided to do their jobs (and keep hundreds of people who WANT to work employed) don’t follow suit.
I don’t know how TV shows or movies work behind the scenes, but if the writers are on strike and prevent production, doesn’t the rest of the crew get screwed out of a paycheck too if they can’t work? Honestly asking so no snide or rude comments please.
Unfortunately, yes. Some people have been stepping up to help the crews, though. John Oliver booked a comedy tour to raise funds for his crew, and five of the late-night talk show hosts have launched the Strike Force 5 podcast, with proceeds going to their crew, for example.