Drew Barrymores's Apology Video Just Made Everything Worse
As y’all might have noticed, I have used My World of Flops to explore the fascinating phenomenon of celebrities making public apologies for their misdeeds and transgressions that somehow only make things worse.
I’m fascinated by these strange, sad spectacles, both because of what they say about the misguided fools making them and a culture that aggressively rejects them.
I’ve covered any number of scoundrels here so it feels weird to be writing up the ill-fated apology of someone I genuinely like and consider a good person.
I like Drew Barrymore. I always have. How can you not like Drew Barrymore? She’s like a run of sunshine in a dark world.
She radiates pure joy. She’s suffered even more than most former child stars and somehow came out the other side a sunny, optimistic and positive person, a pure soul.
My parasocial relationship with Barrymore stretches back over four decades, to when she starred in E.T, a massive blockbuster that was, at one point, the top-grossing film of all time.
So when I saw that Drew Barrymore, and seemingly only Drew Barrymore (and The View), had decided to resume production on her talk show despite the ongoing actors and writers strikes I was deeply disappointed.
I was not surprised when Bill Maher announced that, as part of his commitment to being the worst, shittiest person imaginable, he had decided to hop back on the air prematurely. That dude fucking sucks. Of course he would undermine the entire strike by returning to the airwaves.
I was disappointed and also surprised by Barrymore’s actions, however. It seemed out of character for Barrymore. As a result of a single action Barrymore almost immediately went from being the beloved, widely adored scion of a complicated and impressive acting dynasty to being a dirty scab.
It did not matter that the Screen Actors Guild said that she was under no obligation to strike. Barrymore crossed a WGA picket line and that made her a scab as far as unions, and also everyone else, was concerned.
The response was immediate and severe. The National Book Foundation dropped her as the host of the National Book Awards. She had the misfortune to become the Main Character of the Day on the internet, and that is never a good thing. A reputation that she had spent decades building and rehabilitating was suddenly in tatters due to one bad choice.
So Barrymore did what celebrities do these days. She taped an apology video in what appears to be her kitchen using what I’m guessing is a flip phone from the late 1990s.
Like Ashton Kutcher and Mila Kunis, Barrymore chose to make herself look as bad as humanly possible. She stops just short of delivering her misguided monologue from the inside of an overflowing garbage can.
She appears not to have bathed in several weeks. She’s not wearing make-up. She’s wearing a purple sweatshirt from Wal-Mart.
The idea is that if Barrymore is being raw and unvarnished in her visual presentation then the words and ideas she’s espousing are raw and real and unvarnished as well. It’s a cynical visual shorthand that fools no one. Only the biggest fool would equate shabby aesthetics with brutal honesty.
So raw! So honest!
A clearly shaken and traumatized Barrymore begins by deeply apologizing to writers and to unions. Though she is a polished performer who has been making a fortune from acting longer than most folks have been alive she doesn’t seem to know what she’s doing. She stumbles through her presentation because the viral celebrity apology video is a new and hazardous art form that is nearly impossible to do well. Video is a terrible medium for apologies. It puts apologists in an uncomfortable position. If they’re slick and forceful they seem like glib phonies. But if they go the Kutcher-Munis-Barrymore route of looking much worse than a normal person their despair feels performative and manipulative, even if it is sincere. I think that Barrymore was sincerely shocked by the response to her union-busting and Kunis and Kutcher were also very genuinely horrified that they were being held responsible for gushing effusively about a convicted rapist while also running a charity that fights sexual abuse.
Barrymore believed that the reason that people were furious with her for resuming her show during multiple strikes was because they did not understand the logic behind it.
She poignantly believed that if she got real with her fans in an intimate, vulnerable video then they would stop being angry and understand where she’s coming from and the pressure she faces.
Barrymore didn’t realize that people weren’t angry at her because they didn’t know why she crossed a picket line: they were angry at her because she crossed a picket line and in doing so weakened a strike whose stakes almost couldn’t be higher.
Before her tearful confession Barrymore posted a statement on Instagram that was, if not completely written by publicists, then at least reflects their input and guidance. It read, in part, “We are in compliance with not discussing or promoting film and television that is struck of any kind. We launched live in a global pandemic. Our show was built for sensitive times and has only functioned through what the real world is going through in real time. I want 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.”
Barrymore gives herself credit no less than three times for being brave enough to be raw and real without oily publicists getting in the way.
Early in the video she says, “I wanted to own a decision so that it wasn’t a PR-protected situation and I would just take full responsibility for my actions.”
Later she says, “No, I don’t have a PR machine behind this” before insisting, during the interminable video’s home stretch, “I won’t polish this with bells and whistles and publicists and corporate rhetoric. I’ll just stand out there and be responsible.”
The video nevertheless reiterates many of the talking points of the publicist written or sharpened Instagram post but in a way that makes it seem like Barrymore is having a nervous breakdown.
The sentiments are the same but she’s far less polished, articulate and coherent.
In the woeful apology videos of Colleen “Miranda Sings” Ballinger and Ashton Kutcher/Mila Kunis the implication is that they’re telling the truth, taking responsibility and being honest because they look awful and are saying things that would make their publicists weep uncontrollably and question pretty much all their life choices.
Barrymore makes that subtext text by saying three times in a four minute video that an absence of publicists equals an abundance of raw, unvarnished truth.
I find Barrymore’s video fascinating and I’m pretty sure it will be gone from the web completely in just a few days so I am going to refute it point by point.
Barrymore insists, "my intentions have never been in a place to upset or hurt anyone. It’s not who I am.”
That could very well be true. Barrymore’s intentions might be to uplift her viewers during a time of great peril and uncertainty but that doesn’t matter. What matters are the consequences of her actions, which is to weaken the strike by putting on a television show when the whole point of the strike is to shut down the industry.
Strikes are disruptive by nature. They are supposed to shut down whole industries so that the powers that be are forced to come to the table and make important concessions.
A strike where all of television is on strike is inherently stronger than one where all of television is on strike with the notable exception of Drew Barrymore, Bill Maher, The View and The Talk.
Barrymore insists, “We aren’t going to break rules and we will be in compliance” as if technically abiding by the rules of the strike absolves her of any sins. Barrymore going back on the air without writers might not have violated the exact rules of the strike but it hurts it all the same.
Barrymore plays on our sympathy for her and everything that she’s gone through, which is a lot, when she says, “I’ve been through so many ups and downs in my life and this is one of them.”
This isn’t about Barrymore. That’s the essence of labor: it’s not about one person. It’s about coming together as a group to try to counter-act the awful, immense power of owners, executives and various other parasites.
As far as I am concerned the only halfway decent rationale for resuming production during a strike is not wanting other crew-people to suffer because actors and writers are fighting for their professional lives and livelihoods.
Barrymore alludes to that when she says, “this is bigger than me and there are other people’s jobs on the line.”
Thankfully Barrymore can use the hundred million dollars she’s apparently worth to help her non-writing crew during this time of peril.
Also, pretty much everyone else in television weighed the costs and benefits and came down squarely on the side of honoring the strike and not resuming production before its end. That’s a healthy form of peer pressure.
Barrymore’s weakest and most self-aggrandizing argument is that her show is very special to her viewers and she wanted to put on a “show that was there for people in sensitive times” as if a daytime talk show is so powerful and important that it deserves to be back on the air when literally everyone else has struck for basic rights.
Barrymore engages in some serious false equivalency when she argues that if her talk show could launch during a pandemic that shut down seemingly the sum of American life then why shouldn’t she be able to continue to produce it during a strike.
She doesn’t grasp that just because you can do something doesn’t mean that you should do something. Barrymore technically could resume her show without violating the rules but that does not mean that she should. Also Barrymore wasn’t hurting her colleagues and her writers by launching during a pandemic. She was, however, hurting her colleagues and writers by going against the strike.
Thankfully Barrymore came to her senses after being pilloried online for both her actions and her woefully unconvincing defense.
She paused production on her show and the world got less angry at her.
In her video Barrymore says that nothing she can do or say will make people not be mad at her. She is very, evidently wrong. All Barrymore had to do was change course and say that she would be pausing her show, along with everyone else in the television industry, and instantly people got a lot less apoplectic about her and her actions.
I’m glad! I want to continue liking Drew Barrymore.
In a Big Whoop piece I posted this week I wrote that on the Left if you make a mistake you are expected to own up to it, apologize and then change your behavior.
Barrymore isn’t a particularly political figure but that’s what she did. True, she had to get into a lot of trouble before doing so but I appreciate that she listened to what people were saying and responded accordingly.
She even took down her apology video. That was a PR move, obviously, but actions speak louder than words and Barrymore eventually took the right actions.
This will still hurt Barrymore’s previously pristine reputation but not anywhere as much as resuming production on her show in the face of toxic buzz would have.
Failure, Fiasco or Secret Success: Fiasco
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