Recently Lainey’s been writing about what it takes to excel at morning television, related to Scarlett Johansson co-hosting on The Today Show for a week as part of “Jenna & Friends”. Thinking about the skills and talents Lainey outlined—likeable, relatable, yet prepared and polished enough to pull off an interview, but still loose and game enough for silly segments—it occurred to me that Drew Barrymore has turned out to be a brilliant daytime talk show host because she’s all of those things. Her interviews can get a little woolly, but in a good way, in a friends catching up kind of way. Like I watch one of her interviews and picture people talking on the phone, but one of those old landline phones with the super long cord. Just talking and talking while making dinner with the cord wrapped three times around the entire kitchen.
Drew is a generationally iconic actor, she’s been famous her whole life, yet she remains a charming oddball, everyone’s eccentric auntie. This is why she’s perfect to be the center square in the reboot of Hollywood Squares. Paul Lynde is the iconic center square, and while Drew doesn’t have his acerbic wit, she does have star power and her brand of daffy energy to play. In a vaguely dystopic move that reminds me a lot of the television landscape post the 2007-8 writers’ strike, CBS is filling its mid-season schedule with gameshows, including Hollywood Squares on Wednesdays. Drew is the only thing that makes this tenable to me, because she is imminently watchable. The same skills that make her a good talk show host make her a good center square.
In other Drew news, she recently “reunited”—in quotes because it’s virtual—with her fellow Angels and Demi Moore, twenty-three years after Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle. Say what you will about those movies, but these ladies have remained friends for two decades, so some good came of it.
I wonder if in another decade, we’ll be talking about Scarlett Johansson in a phase of her career like this, somewhat post-acting and fulfilling other roles in entertainment. Maybe it will be as a director—though her directorial debut, Eleanor the Great, is mired in Justin Baldoni’s Wayfarer mess—or maybe she’ll be hosting more. Some people can balance robust hosting careers with acting, like Joel McHale, but they’re such specific skill sets, it seems like people usually diverge one way or the other, like Drew, who is acting less these days (her last leading role was in Santa Clarita Diet, criminally cancelled too soon!).
It’s not like Scarlett’s career is hurting, and she has an inevitable return to Marvel to look forward to (Avengers: Secret Wars, count on it), but like Drew, she’s been acting since she was a child and she’s been famous her whole life. Sometimes, people just start wanting different things, a different kind of life. Who can never be sure.
Here’s Drew going into The Late Show to promote Hollywood Squares. Somehow, it always seems like she’s standing in a sunbeam even when it’s night.
