Drew Barrymore says that her recent friendship with Britney Spears has formed into a “deep connection.” While appearing on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon yesterday (September 13), the actress said she knew that she’d be one of the only people who could relate to Britney’s situation.
Barrymore, 47, said she reached out to Spears, 40, in 2021. She revealed, “I made friends with Britney about a year and a half ago and we sort of had some secret exchanges. I know that sounds nefarious, it was exactly the opposite. It was very connective and honest and we’ve both been through a lot of things, we have some parallels that are unique in their circumstances.” Spears’ 13-year conservatorship was terminated last November, and since then, she has slammed her family members, including dad Jamie Spears, mom Lynne Spears and younger sister Jamie Lynn Spears.
Unfortunately for Barrymore, she, too, dealt with a troubled youth as a child actress, developing an addiction to alcohol and cocaine at just 11 years old and attempting suicide at 14, per CNN. In her book, Wildflower, Barrymore wrote that her mother “locked [her] up in an institution” as a teen for a year and a half. “It was like serious recruitment training and boot camp, and it was horrible and dark and very long-lived, a year and a half, but I needed it. I needed that whole insane discipline. My life was not normal. I was not a kid in school with normal circumstances. There was something very abnormal, and I needed some severe shift.” She emancipated from her mother at 14.
“The feelings of growing up, the struggling — all the stuff that we’ve both gone through, is something that I felt connected to her,” she said. “I’m not a real reach-out kind of person, I’m not ‘Hollwood Bob,’ I’m not slick. It’s just, the humanity in what she was going through, trying to get her freedom back, was something I felt compelled to reach out and we found a deep connection there.”
The Drew Barrymore Show host said that she and Spears soon became “genuine friends” and she was thrilled to receive an invitation to the “Hold Me Closer” singer’s wedding in June. “The people you see in that photo are some of the only people there,” Barrymore said. “There was no press, it was the way she wanted to do it, which… led to that photograph, which was also a moment, and none of us planned for it, it just happened organically.”
Watch Drew Barrymore’s interview in full below:
Britney Spears ‘Cried Happy Tears’ At Her ‘Fairytale’ Wedding
