Drew Barrymore has a talk show now, and she’s playing the hits to get things started. The Drew Barrymore Show started with a bang this week, as the movie star reunited with her Charlie’s Angels crew and had Lucy Liu and Cameron Diaz on the show for an interview.
But for fans of her work with Adam Sandler, the bigger news coming from talk show land was a scripted segment where Barrymore and Sandler did an updated version their 2004 romantic comedy 50 First Dates, one of a few rom-coms Barrymore and Sandler made together, in which he and Barrymore fall in love again and again due to a brain condition that causes her to start each day with a freshly wiped memory. At the end of the movie (SPOILER ALERT, I GUESS) Sandler’s character creates a series of videotapes her character can watch each morning to get caught up on all the relevant events in her life. She’s married, she has a child, etc. It’s sweet.
The world is a very different place in 2020, though, and so the tapes from the movie now play out a very different story for Barrymore as she wakes up, sees the “good morning Lucy” tape, and puts it into the television.
“Hi Lucy, good morning. It’s me, Henry,” Sandler says, holding a ukulele. “We are on, I think, about our 5,000th date together. And it’s been great. I’m gonna catch you up.”
He then reminds her she has amnesia, they’re now married, and that they have a daughter.
“She’s about 40 now, something like that,” Sandler says to a clearly confused Barrymore, as Lucy. But then Sandler gets to the bad stuff.
“It’s 2020, and we’re also in the middle of a pandemic, which is a terrible thing,” he says. “Baseball games are now being played in front of cardboard people.”
Barrymore says it sounds like he’s making this up, and there’s a bit of fart humor and a brief fourth-wall-breaking ad for Netflix. And then things get very earnest from Sandler, who addresses Drew the newly-minted TV host rather than her character, Lucy.
“I could honestly not be more excited for you. You have your own show now,” Sandler said, though he was interrupted by Allen Covert showing up as Ten Second Tom from the movie, who would have an even worse time with this whole pandemic thing if he really existed in 2020.
“You are going to make people so happy every day, every time they see you. You are magic,” Sandler said. “The whole world feels it and I’m lucky that I know you so well. I love you.”
Barrymore seemed genuinely touched by his words, and it was a really nice sendoff for her on the show’s first week.