Drew Barrymore recalls filming Never Been Kissed and being asked to “tone it down” because her character, Josie Grossie, was deemed “too unattractive.”
In a recent episode of her talk show The Drew Barrymore Show, the actress talked about her experience while filming the 1999 romantic comedy, the first one from her production company Flower Films.
“At that time, people were very weary of actors being producers,” Barrymore told her talk show guests Christine Taylor and David Lascher. “A lot of it wasn’t necessarily working, and it didn’t mean because you were an actor, you knew how to produce the film. And it was about the economics. So if you didn’t make the film work, and you produced it as an actor, you are likely to not be able to do it again.”
Barrymore said the pressure of acting and producing in the film made her “very stressed,” adding, “I was so scared during the whole film because I knew if it didn’t work, we weren’t going to get another chance.”
The talk show host said that although she had “so much fun making” the film, she had to “clench her stomach the whole time.”
“And I would get these calls from the studio and they were like, ‘I’m sorry, but you’re just looking top unattractive. Stop it,’” she continued. “And I was like, ‘Good.’ And they were like, ‘No, no, no, no, no. It’s too far.’ So I was forced to even tone it down a little bit because I had gone even farther than.”
“Then they said something that appealed to my sensibilities rather than my ego. They were like, ‘We don’t want you to lose the heart because you’re going so far for the comedy.’ And I was like, ‘Great argument. Let me dial it back a little bit.’ And so Josie what you see there is me dialed back and it came out and it worked. And we got really lucky and I’m very, very grateful and I would walk around just going I can’t believe this work. We’re gonna get a second shot.”
Never Been Kissed was directed by Raja Gosnell and written by Abby Kohn and Marc Silverstein. Barrymore co-starred with David Arquette, Michael Vartan, Leelee Sobieski, Jeremy Jordan, Molly Shannon, Garry Marshall and John C. Reilly.
Watch Drew Barrymore remember filming Never Been Kissed in the video below.