Drew Barrymore Says She’s Trying to Grow Despite Her Mom Still ‘Being on This Planet’

Some of Drew Barrymore’s most touching interviews on The Drew Barrymore Show have been with former child stars who—to put it mildly—have overbearing mothers. In September, during a conversation with New York Times best-selling author Jeannette McCurdy, the pair discussed their mothers’ roles in their troubled Hollywood childhoods. Barrymore asked McCurdy, in regards to her relationship with her now-dead abusive mother, “Does someone have to die in order to be able for us to tell our truth? I don’t know if I can do it because certain people are alive.” McCurdy responded: “If saying the truth ends the relationship, I think it’s probably a relationship that needed to end.”

Barrymore, who went to rehab, a psychiatric hospital, and became legally emancipated by age 15, has a long and storied history with her mother, who rather famously took then-child Barrymore to all those parties in the first place. In a new profile published by New York on Monday, the talk show host spoke more to their tumultuous relationship: “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,” she told writer, E. Alex Jung. “I actually want her to be happy and thrive and be healthy. But I have to fucking grow in spite of her being on this planet.” I imagine there is a lot more to her story than Barrymore wrote in her 1990 memoir, Little Girl Lost.

Barrymore also talked about the time her therapist, Barry Michels, dumped her because she started drinking again and got “stuck in an endless rut” after her 2016 divorce from Will Kopelman.

“Occasionally, a therapist has to suspend treatment until a patient is willing to stop certain chronic self-destructive behaviors that are impeding the therapy,” Michels said in an emailed statement to TODAY.com in March. “Fortunately, in this case, I was dealing with Drew Barrymore — one of the strongest and most stalwart people I’ve ever met. She did the right thing for herself, and we were able to resume our treatment together.”

(Barrymore confirmed to New York that, once she stopped drinking for two years, Michels agreed to take her back.)

But, the mother-daughter relationship continued to weigh on Barrymore as Jung spent time with the star this spring. Within an hour of saying she needs to move on even if her momager isn’t dead, Jung wrote that Barrymore felt bad for voicing that truth: “I dared to say it, and I didn’t feel good,” Barrymore told Jung. “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 adult Barrymore will forever be characterized by her relatability. And frankly, not knowing how to navigate a complicated relationship with your mother, or being dropped by a therapist, will only add to her accessible and sympathetic nature.