Speaking to marie claire editor Nicky Briger on the Finding Fearless podcast, Barrymore admitted, “I was really broken. Divorce is the death of a dream. I lost 40 pounds [18 kilograms] of weight.”
Following her split with Kopelman after three years of marriage and two kids [Olive, 6, and Frankie, 5], Barrymore says she felt like a failure. “When you break up with somebody, you’re like, ‘Yeah that didn’t work.’ When you get divorced, you’re like, ‘I’m the biggest failure.’ It’s so shameful and hard to actually go through that, even privately,” she said on Chelsea Handler’s Netflix show in 2017.
Reflecting once more on that painful time in her life, Barrymore told marie claire that going back to work was her saviour. “I had to go back to work,” she said, talking about the reason she signed on to play a zombie-real-estate-agent on Santa Clarita Diet. “This project came along. Sometimes what you think is the worst timing ever is actually the best blessing. So be open.”
Barrymore’s advice for getting through the dark times is to find your tribe. “I have a long standing history with my girlfriends. They are my original family,” she revealed. “You cannot accomplish anything by yourself. It takes this village.”
Listen to the Finding Fearless podcast on ACAST.
