‘Charlie’s Angels’ Reunion: Demi Moore’s ‘Full Throttle’ Costars Celebrate The Substance

In the summer of 2002, Drew Barrymore, Cameron Diaz, and Lucy Liu reunited for production of Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle, the swiftly commissioned sequel to their 2000 action-comedy box-office hit Charlie’s Angels. They were joined by a fourth A-list actress, playing a new adversary for the trio of secret agents: Demi Moore. The first movie Moore had filmed in four years—she’d taken a hiatus from the industry to spend more time with her family—Full Throttle allowed the actor to sink her teeth into a delicious villain, and forge some tight new bonds along the way.

Twenty-three years later, the three original Angels have reunited with Moore over Zoom to celebrate Moore’s celebrated performance in The Substance, for which she has just received her first Oscar nomination (and a Golden Globe). “We are four women who love each other, respect each other, have known each other, have worked together, and celebrate female friendship,” Barrymore says in the recorded conversation, which Vanity Fair can debut exclusively. “What was an easy yes for all of us was to come together and talk to Demi, and about Demi in this performance.”

The film stars Moore as a once-beloved movie star tossed aside by a sexist and ageist industry. The role resonated for her Full Throttle co-stars, each of whom has been a force in this industry for decades. As they got to chatting about Moore’s intense, vulnerable work in the film, a whole lot came up—about where they were in their lives at the time of Charlie’s Angels, about navigating the objectification that comes with being an actress in Hollywood, and about the inspiration of watching Moore take on such risky, personal material. You can watch the discussion below, and read on for excerpts from each of the actors.

Demi Moore on Feeling “Very Lost” After Making Full Throttle

“I went to just be with my kids, and then the first thing I did coming out of that was Charlie’s Angels. I was thinking about that because in [The Substance], it’s being reflected that she’s not as valuable. In [Full Throttle], we had this scene that [director] McG added, with me being in a bikini, which became this kind of big media interpretation—that ironically was attached to me, as if I was about my body versus it being just a part of the story that we were telling: this great cinematic moment of Cameron and I being on the beach. I felt more of the experience that my character [in The Substance] goes through in my 40s than I feel today. I didn’t quite fit anywhere. I wasn’t 30. I wasn’t 20, but I wasn’t what at that time people thought of as somebody 40. I felt very lost.”

Lucy Liu on the “Rawness” That Moore Captured in The Substance:

“I think I can speak for all of us—we are so proud of you. This performance, you’ve always had it in you and in all of the work that you’ve done. There’s so much vulnerability in the strength that you are able to put on camera. That moment of you taking the makeup off, to reveal the psychological toll of this kind of unattainable pressure from society of what beauty is and what aging is or what is commercial, what is so shin. It was done in a way where you really captured that rawness: that feeling of being insecure but also comfortable with yourself, but then realizing that other people aren’t comfortable with yourself.”

Drew Barrymore on Moore’s Break From Hollywood

“This is what I know about you because of your life that is public information: You walked away. I wonder if I trusted your performance so much because I knew that you exercised a ‘take it or leave it’ in this industry. You actually removed yourself and said, “I’m a whole person. I’m going to go be a whole person. I don’t need this right now.” That was subconsciously in the back of my head, this strength that for me bolstered this journey and going with this woman—because I knew you had this personal strength, so I could take in all the insecurity and neurosis in the world. It was anchored in this lack of desperation.

“I was like, ‘This badass has walked away at the height of success and taken time for herself.’ It gave me something delicious that I’ve wished for—for every human being, let alone woman—which is that I can live without your acceptance. Seeing your performance in this, it could go so much further for me because I knew that you had your own personal wherewithal to not ask for the outside world’s approval throughout your entire life.”

Cameron Diaz on Connecting to The Substance’s Themes

“All women, we are conditioned to be objectified—period. Whether we are movie stars [or not], it’s just every woman. Obviously it’s more extreme in our circumstances, because we’re projected onto a screen and literally objectified. We’ve had dolls made out of us. It’s just so innate. It’s so ingrained in us. We bow down to that. We serve that objectification. We try to meet its request in so many ways.

“In watching you give this performance, you don’t have to ask anybody’s permission. It’s as if there was a constitution written in the film industry that laid out what the film industry was, and everybody has been abiding by it for the last however many decades. Y’all went in and just shredded it to pieces and said, I do not agree with this constitution. We are rewriting this. And not only that, but we’re going to in the most audacious, violent, crazy way that you could possibly do it.”