Drew Barrymore has made a few enemies overnight. The actress has gone from being seen as a supportive companion to becoming the first scab to skip the strike of Hollywood actors and screenwriters, who are fighting for better working conditions.
She herself has announced, through her social networks, that with immediate effect she was resuming the recording of her program The Drew Barrymore Show, a talk show that she has presented, produced and directed on CBS since September 2020.
The fourth season will premiere on September 18. Although Barrymore initially supported the strike and delayed production of her show, she has now decided to resume it without involving the writers of the WGA – the union that staged the strike and which was later joined by the actors' union, SAG-AFTRA.
This announcement has led hundreds of scriptwriters to stand outside the studio where The Drew Barrymore Show is recorded to show their disagreement with the decision. “It has remained off the air since the strike began on May 2, but has now (unfortunately) decided to return without its writers. The Guild has and will continue to picket any program that continues production while the strike lasts,” one of the spokespersons for the Writers Guild of America told the Hollywood Reporter.
The fear that the strikers have is that this step taken by the protagonist of 50 First Dates will be followed by many others and will end up reducing the unions' negotiating capacity. Among the voices that have been raised against the interpreter is that of actress Felicia Day, known for her role as Vi in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, who has written in X: “So who is going to write the opening monologue and literally anything in this program when it starts again next week? The non-union ones?! Ughhhh gross, Drew Barrymore. Gross".
Other prominent figures in the script such as comedian Adam Conover have also rebuked his action: “This is incredibly disappointing. The Drew Barrymore show has writers union employees going on strike. She chooses to re-air without them and forces her guests to cross the picket line. Drew: This hurts your writers and all union workers. Please reconsider.”
Drew is now seen by many as a traitor who only looks out for her own interests. She justified herself in a statement: “I am making the decision to return for the first time in this strike with our program, which may bear my name, but this is bigger than just me (...) Our program was built for times delicate and has only worked through what the real world is happening in real time. “I want to be there to offer what screenwriters do so well, which is a way to unite us or help us make sense of the human experience,” she explains.
At the beginning of the strike, Barrymore announced that she was canceling her role as host of the MTV Film and Television Awards, in solidarity with the writers' strike, since the actors and actresses' strike had not yet begun. Her sit-in at the awards forced the event to be cancelled.
