Drew Barrymore says that she thought the titular alien from Steven Spielberg's E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial was real while filming the classic movie. Barrymore was seven years old when she played Gertie in the film.
“I really loved him in such a profound way,” she confessed during an upcoming episode of The Drew Barrymore Show, adding that she “would go and take lunch to him.”
The episode features Henry Thomas, Robert MacNaughton, and Dee Wallace.
“We found you over there just talking away to E.T. and so we let director Steven [Spielberg] know,” Wallace recalled. “And so Steven, from that time on, appointed two guys to keep E.T. alive so whenever you came over to talk to him, he could react to you.”
Later in the interview, Barrymore and the group discussed the idea of a potential sequel to the 1982 film. Barrymore says that she recalls Spielberg saying he would “never” make a sequel.
“And in that moment I thought, ‘Oh that’s a bummer because that doesn’t bring us all back together again for another round,’” she recalled, “but I also understood and respected and completely knew that it was all about preservation of integrity for him.”
They also said that it's difficult to imagine another E.T. movie without the screenwriter, Melissa Mathison, who wrote the original film. She passed away in 2015.
Instead of a sequel to E.T., Spielberg's next film is set to be The Fabelmans, a coming-of-age drama loosely based on Spielberg's own early life. Michelle Williams, Paul Dano, Seth Rogen, and Judd Hirsch are among the movie's ensemble cast. It is scheduled for a limited theatrical release on November 11, 2022, before expanding on November 23, 2022.
Check out a clip from the upcoming episode of The Drew Barrymore Show below.
[Via]