By today’s standards, E.T., the lovable extra-terrestrial of the Steven Spielberg classic, isn’t so believable. He’s a little clunky, a little stiff, especially when he waddles. (That said, the 2002 edition, which graffitis CGI onto what was once a technical marvel, is grossly inferior.) But at least one cast member thought he was real: seven-year-old Drew Barrymore.
Steven Spielberg appointing 2 guys to ensure E.T. was always operating incase Drew Barrymore went over to talk to him has made my heart so full. What a mensch pic.twitter.com/fsM9C5jLbh
— Liv Marks (@OliviaLilyMarks) October 29, 2022
On this coming Monday’s edition of The Drew Barrymore Show, the actress-turned-morning chat show host can be seen reuniting with the other co-leads of 1982’s highest-grossing film. A preview clip shows her chatting with Henry Thomas, Robert MacNaughton, and Dee Wallace about how, at her young age, she was convinced the puppet-animatronic was a real creature from another world.
“I really loved him in such a profound way,” she confessed, adding that she “would go and take lunch to him.” One time she even asked one of the wardrobe crew to get him a scarf, “because he was gonna get cold.”
Wallace told her that they actually helped create the illusion that E.T. was a real being, at least for her. “We found you over there just talking away to E.T. and so we let director Steven [Spielberg] know,” she 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.”
The four also have bad news for anyone expecting E.T. to get one of those belated sequels that’s all the rage these days: There probably won’t be one — at least with them or Spielberg. Thomas said it was impossible to imagine a follow-up without the original’s screenwriter, Melissa Mathison, who passed away in 2015.
“She was really the heart and soul of it,” he said.
Wallace chimed in, saying, “It’s a classic, leave it a classic.”
Barrymore then remembered Spielberg saying he would “never” make a sequel to the film, one of his biggest hits. “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.”
Not that Spielberg isn’t one for nostalgia. His forthcoming next film, The Fabelmans, is a rare semi-autobiographical work concerning his sometimes fraught but at least movie-mad childhood.
(Via People)