Drew Barrymore clarifies controversial mom comments: I never said ‘I wish my mother was dead’
Drew Barrymore “never” said she wished her mother, Jaid Barrymore, was dead.
After her comments about her relationship with her mom were misconstrued, the actress is clearing the air.
Taking to Instagram Monday, Drew said in a video, “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. And, for 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. I have never said that. I never would,” she continued.
“In fact, I go on to say [in the interview] that I wish I never have to live an existence where I would wish that on someone because that is sick.”
Her clarification comes after the “ET” actress, 48, opened up about her relationship with her mother, 77, in an interview with New York magazine published Monday.
In it, she talked about her troubled past with her mother and explained that she had been jealous of friends who managed to work on their traumas after their moms had died.
“All their moms are gone, and my mom’s not. And I’m like, ‘Well, I don’t have that luxury.’ But I cannot wait,” Drew said.
“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 f–king grow in spite of her being on this planet.”
Later in the interview, Drew expressed remorse for her harsh words.
“I dared to say it, and I didn’t feel good. 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.”
The “Charlie’s Angels” star had a troubled relationship with her parents throughout her childhood and has been open about her struggles to reconcile with them to this day.
When Drew was a child star, her mom was her manager and would often take her to parties around Hollywood, including at Studio 54, which exposed her to drugs and alcohol.
By age 12, Drew had already been admitted to rehab.
A year later, she was placed in a California mental health facility for a year and a half at the will of her mother. And by 14, Drew became emancipated from her mother and father, John Drew Barrymore.
In a 2021 interview with Howard Stern, Drew recalled that the treatment would later be the “best thing to happen to [her], in a sick way, because it cooled [her] out.”
“I think she created a monster and she didn’t know what to do with the monster,” she told Stern of her mother.
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The actress — who has two daughters with ex-husband Will Kopelman — also shared that while her relationship with her mother is not the same, there is “healing there.”
As of 2021, Jaid has a limited relationship with Drew’s children.
“She’s met my kids,” she said. “But there’s real boundaries and distance and a lot of respect.”
In her interview with New York Magazine, Drew shared that she doesn’t “blame” Jaid, who she still supports financially, for the difficulties in her life today.
“I choose very consciously not to see my life as things that have been done to me. I want to see it as the things I did and chose to do. I’m not attracted to people who lay blame on others. I don’t find it sexy,” she said.
Drew was also able to find empathy for her father for their tumultuous relationship as she grew up.
She later paid for his hospice care following a diagnosis of multiple myeloma. He died in 2004.
“I just understood what an incapable human being he was,” she told the outlet.
Drew added that it “must be so hard” for her mother, who has not garnered the same sympathy John got from Drew following his illness.
“It’s like she gets all the heartache and he gets given a free ticket.”
