She’s the descendant of one of the most fabled acting families in the US. Since a child she wormed her way into the hearts of generations of movie lovers — from the too-cute youngster in ET to the possessed pyromaniac of Firestarter and dozens of films since.
So you wouldn’t think Drew Barrymore would be the Hollywood star at the centre of an outcry in the high tension of the current writers’ and actors’ strikes that have shut the industry down for months, but she is.
This week Barrymore announced that her eponymous daytime talk show will be resuming production, in contravention of the rules governing the Writers Guild of America (WGA) strike. The 47-year-old actress who received widespread praise in May when she dropped out of hosting duties for the MTV Movie & TV Awards in solidarity with the strikers, now finds herself the subject of angry pickets and the trending hashtag #DrewTheRightThing.
Barrymore made the announcement earlier this week, attempting to placate strikers by assuring them the writers on the show would be non-union members and that she would not be promoting any “film and television that is struck off” on the show. That did little to stave off the outrage of WGA members, including union aligned writers from her own show, who joined a picket outside CBS’ studios on Monday in protest, holding signs that read “Drew’s WGA crew”.
Barrymore’s assertion that she was partly restarting production in an effort to “be there to provide what writers do so well, which is a way to bring us together or help us make sense of the human experience” was loudly scoffed at and did nothing to stop the WGA from publicly condemning the decision as a violation of union rules.
Things only got worse when during the first taping of the show on Monday, two audience members went on social media to reveal that they had been aggressively confronted and kicked out of the studio because they were wearing pins supporting the WGA. A spokesperson for the show claimed it was all just a terrible misunderstanding resulting from “heightened security concerns”, and offered the offended audience members free tickets for their troubles. They went outside, bought WGA T-shirts and joined the picket line instead.
The storm around Barrymore showed little sign of abating when on Tuesday the National Book Foundation, which had booked her to be the host of its National Book Awards, announced it was rescinding the invitation. “The National Book Awards is an evening dedicated to celebrating the power of literature and the incomparable contributions of our writers to our culture. Our commitment is to ensure that the focus of the awards remains on celebrating writers and books,” the foundation said.
In spite of the outrage at her decision to return to the studio, Barrymore has as yet shown no sign that she intends to retreat to her mansion with her tail between her legs and, to make matters worse, other daytime talk shows have announced they will be following her example. The Talk, The Jennifer Hudson Show and Sherri are all headed back to work even though they are covered by the WGA as under strike regulations. So much for “Drewing the right thing”.
Barrymore is not the only A-Lister whose life is been turned upside down by the continuing strike action though. After months of assuring their top-line creators, who have signed exclusive big-money contracts, that their deals would not be affected by the strike action, Warner Brothers announced last week that it is suspending contracts with the top 1% of its television writers including Mindy Kaling — creator of the Max series The Secret Lives of College Girls — and JJ Abrams, whose latest television creation Duster is due for release soon-ish. The studio also suspended its deal with Ted Lasso creator Bill Lawrence and several of its other big-name writing talents with whom it had previously crowed about securing lucrative contracts.
Though these one percenter creators have contracts that will ensure that they are paid out what they are owed by Warner Brothers, the studio’s use of what’s called a “suspend and extend” strategy to cut its costs is a worrying one that may have wide-ranging implications for other top-tier creators contracted to similar deals at other studios. Warner Brothers will suspend the contracts and is then likely to look to restart them once the strike ends. But the trust issues the strategy creates between the studio and star writers may be insurmountable.
The studio has argued that it has little choice as the strike action is set to negatively affect its earnings for 2023 by up to $500m, according to a report in The New York Times. Both the Screen Actors Guild and the Writer’s Guild of America are on strike, a joint action that hasn’t occurred since 1960 — and Warner’s decision may indicate that studios believe the strikes will continue late into the US autumn, wreaking further havoc on release schedules and earnings projections.
The studios released their offer to the WGA on August 23, claiming that their increase offer was the highest in three decades, but this had little effect other than to galvanise the guild’s 11,000 members to continue striking and loudly decrying the offer as a “half-measure”.
Luckily for everyone, Barrymore will be on the air, ready to help her former friends and righteously furious colleagues work through what has been described as the biggest existential moment in film and television’s history, and which is still far from reaching a satisfyingly neat Hollywood ending.
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