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Here's Why Drew Barrymore Is Facing Backlash From Striking Writers
Barrymore's talk show announced it was resuming production in the middle of a strike.
Drew Barrymore has come under fire in recent days after announcing that her talk show will begin filming its new season this week. The problem? Writers in Hollywood are still on strike—and The Drew Barrymore Show is a struck show.
The Writers Guild of America (WGA) has been on strike since May 2 of this year, meaning no union screenwriters have been working on WGA-covered projects for struck companies during this time, as they wait on the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) to agree to a new deal that will ensure protection against AI, fair compensation in an age of streaming dominance, and address other serious concerns.
This has shut down many productions, as has the actors’ strike that began two months later. But The Drew Barrymore Show is now claiming they can return because they simply aren’t employing writers on the show at all this season. In fact, the show’s writers are actually picketing the production themselves.
The WGA East made it clear that any writing done on The Drew Barrymore Show counts as scabbing, and skeptics have pointed out that it’s essentially impossible for nothing to be written on a show.
“While the opening monologues, jokes, and interviews on talk shows may seem spontaneous, a huge amount of writing work goes into every episode,” writer David Slack explained on Twitter. “By going back on the air without her writers, Drew Barrymore is 100% ensuring that *someone* — either herself, one of her non-writing producers, or all of the above — will be doing the writing work that WGA writers normally do.”
What’s more is that audience members who showed up for the first day of production and took pins from picketing writers out front alleged that Barrymore’s staff reacted aggressively and kicked them out.
“Drew was completely unaware of the incident and we are in the process of reaching out to the affected audience members to offer them new tickets,” a spokesperson for the show told Variety.
Barrymore herself has insinuated that she’s bringing her show back for the sake of her crew, calling the show “bigger than just me.” But many have suggested that providing struck companies with content to air will only prolong the strike, keeping the crews of other shows out of work.
The Never Been Kissed actor has also been booted from her role as host at the National Book Awards in response to the backlash, as the event noted it is “dedicated to celebrating the power of literature, and the incomparable contributions of writers to our culture.”
Picketing writers are still hoping Barrymore will shut production down, and that people will think twice about crossing the picket lines either to appear on the show or join the audience. But in the meantime, none of it is a good look for her personally, and is causing harm to those impacted by the studios continuing to hold out and fail to make a fair deal with the WGA.
Rachel Kiley is presumably a writer and definitely not a terminator. She can usually be found crying over queerbaiting in the Pitch Perfect franchise or on Twitter, if not both.
Rachel Kiley is presumably a writer and definitely not a terminator. She can usually be found crying over queerbaiting in the Pitch Perfect franchise or on Twitter, if not both.
