Drew Barrymore has a sense of humor about her past addiction struggles.
During Us Weekly’s exclusive sneak peek of the Sunday, January 19, episode of Hollywood Squares, Barrymore, 49, was asked who Tom Conti played in 2023’s Oppenheimer.
“Punky Brewster,” she quipped. “By the way, I was on the set of that show, of course. Oh, yeah, me and Soleil Moon Frye used to kick it!”
Barrymore’s fellow panelist Whitney Cummings then asked if the Punky Brewster set visit was during her “cocaine days.” (The four-season sitcom aired between 1984 and 1988.)
Drew Barrymore Through the Years: Photos
“Actually, it was just before,” Barrymore explained. “I was with Punky and then I got spunky.”
Barrymore, the iconic Center Square on the rebooted game show, has been a Hollywood mainstay since childhood following a scene-stealing turn in Steven Spielberg’s E.T. By age 13, Barrymore entered rehab for the first time after experimenting with drugs and alcohol. She has been sober since 2019.
“I’ve had a ‘bad girl’ narrative on my back my whole life. I thought I deserved bad things. Now I’m raising two daughters. I can’t do that to myself anymore,” Barrymore exclusively told Us Weekly in February 2024. “Kind of like the drinking — I’m picking off things one at a time, going, ‘I can’t carry you anymore. You aren’t good for me.’”
Barrymore shares daughters Olive, 12, and Frankie, 10, with ex-husband Will Kopelman and has since been candid about how motherhood shifted her overall perspective.
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“The personal part of me has been the ultimate work in progress. The professional in me feels really brave and never entitled. Always so privileged and grateful,” she revealed to Us last year. “I’ve lost everything. I’ve got it back. I’ve lost it again. Got it back. So I don’t assume anything stays. I know not to take anything for granted. Whatever difficult times I’ve gone through professionally, I believed I could rewrite things. Then in my personal life, I was a failure and a broken person. I can’t f—ing believe I’m alive sometimes. And it’s the first time in my life, going on 49, that [the personal and professional] are complementing each other. Time is the greatest asset we have — it allows things to get better, to shift, to have light come into a dark space.”
Presently, Barrymore appears on Hollywood Squares and her eponymous The Drew Barrymore Show, respectively.
A special episode of Hollywood Squares airs on CBS Sunday, January 19, after the AFC primetime football game. Later episodes will be broadcast Wednesdays at 10 p.m. ET.
If you or someone you know is struggling with substance abuse, contact the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) National Helpline at 1-800-662-HELP (4357).
