Drew Barrymore is not pleased with a recent flurry of reports that claimed she wished her mother was dead, and she’s not going to let it slide quietly.
“To all you tabloids out there, you have been fucking with my life since I was 13 years old,” Barrymore said in an Instagram video. “I have never said that I wish my mother was dead. How dare you put those words in my mouth.”
The reports stem from this week’s profile in Vulture, in which Barrymore discussed her complicated relationship with her mother Jaid.
“All their moms are gone, and my mom’s not,” she said at one point. “And I’m like, Well, I don’t have that luxury. But I cannot wait. I don’t want to live in a state where I wish someone to be gone sooner than they’re meant to be so I can grow. I actually want her to be happy and thrive and be healthy. But I have to fucking grow in spite of her being on this planet.”
Journalist E. Alex Jung notes in the profile that an hour after she made the comment, Barrymore seemed to regret her words. “I dared to say it, and I didn’t feel good,” she told him. “I do care. I’ll never not care. I don’t know if I’ve ever known how to fully guard, close off, not feel, build the wall up.”
Soon after the profile’s publication, various news sites began to aggregate Barrymore’s comments with varying degrees of tact. The Daily Mail ran the words “Drew Barrymore admits she wishes her mom was DEAD” in their headline (emphasis theirs), while Page Six went with “Drew Barrymore admits she wishes her mother Jaid was dead: ‘I cannot wait.’”
On Monday, Barrymore did not hold back her feelings. “I have been vulnerable and tried to figure out a very difficult, painful relationship while admitting it is difficult to do while a parent is alive,” she said in her Instagram video, “and that those of us who have to figure that out in real time cannot wait, as in they cannot wait for the time. Not that the parent is dead.”
“Don’t twist my words around or ever say that I wish my mother was dead,” Barrymore added. “I have never said that. I never would. In fact, I go on to say that I wish that I never have to live an existence where I would wish that on someone. Because that is sick.”
Barrymore has opened up about her family history (including her relationship with her mother) before. In 2015, ahead of the publication of her memoir Wildflower, Barrymore spoke with The Guardian about being emancipated from her mother at 14 after an 18-month stint in the hospital, where she received treatment for alcohol and drug addiction. As described in the piece, Barrymore began accompanying her mother to Studio 54 at age nine—“where she was introduced to drugs and encouraged to dance with famous young men.”
Discussing her time in the hospital ahead of her emancipation, Barrymore said, “It was a very important thing to experience for me. It was very humbling, very quieting. Maybe it was necessary, because I came out of there a more respecting person. And my parents didn’t teach me that, and life wasn’t teaching me that. I came out in a very different way… but I still was me.”
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