Do we like Drew Barrymore?
Our score: 8 out of 10. Years of visible support for LGBTQ+ people and real warmth with guests, balanced by a couple of public missteps she apologised for.
Drew Barrymore turned 51 in February 2026 and she's still at it, fronting a daytime talk show that was renewed in March through season eight. That's a rare feat in a genre where shows keep getting axed. The appeal, as fans tell it, is that she hosts like a person rather than a brand.
Her biggest blunder was in September 2023, when she planned to bring the show back while Hollywood writers were still on strike. The Writers Guild said the show was planning to return without its writers, and WGA East said it would picket. She posted a tearful apology video, deleted it, then paused the premiere, saying she had “no words to express my deepest apologies”. It was a bad read of the room, but she fixed course fast.
Another stumble came in May 2022, when she laughed along with a guest about the Johnny Depp and Amber Heard defamation trial. After the backlash she posted an Instagram apology, calling it “a teachable moment for me”. That one stung, but she copped it and said sorry without a fuss.
On the harm test, we found nothing nasty from her. GLAAD gave her its Vanguard Award in 2010 for increasing the visibility and understanding of the LGBT community, and she said she was “born, bred and raised among diversity”. In March 2023 she knelt in front of trans TikToker Dylan Mulvaney during a chat about online hate, and conservative commentators howled while fans praised her compassion. She has kept most of her politics private, so this verdict rests on what she's done and who she's platformed.
The good stuff is mostly how she treats people. On her show she has leaned into kindness, asking viewers to write letters through the nonprofit Just a Kind Note, and a cook who works on the show called her the kindest celebrity he'd met. A resurfaced 2021 clip of her sitting with a guest who was having a rough day went viral, with viewers loving her listening.
The ick is the touching. She's known for being hands-on with guests, and after a November 2024 moment where Martha Stewart pushed her away, she told Andy Cohen that Stewart “really does like me”. It's a fair thing to find cringe, though that's a style issue rather than a character one.