Mom-turned-teacher! Drew Barrymore is having a hard time homeschooling her two daughters amid the coronavirus pandemic.
“School started and it all went out the window,” the actress, 45, said of quarantining with Olive, 7, and Frankie, 5, during a virtual Tuesday, April 14, appearance on the Today show. “The minute I thought, ‘Oh, I’m three weeks in, I’ve got this,’ I cried every day, all day long.”
The Golden Globe winner explained, “It was the messiest plate I’ve ever held in my life, to be the teacher, the parent, the disciplinarian, the caretaker. And I thought, ‘Oh my God, and teachers have children [of their own]. Do they survive it because they get to go away and work with other kids? Have they had their children in their classroom? How did this all work?’”
The “resilient” California native admits she didn’t realize she “needed to respect and appreciate” teachers more than she already did.
Barrymore and her then-husband, Will Kopelman, welcomed Olive and Frankie in 2012 and 2014, respectively. The little ones are already “very theatrical,” the Santa Clarita Diet star told Us Weekly exclusively in April 2019.
“They definitely have a Barrymore gene strong within the two of them, but they’re funny and they’re cool and they’re adventurous and they love coming to set,” the Wildflower author told Us at the time. “I always thought the second they were born like, ‘Oh God, I don’t want you to be an actress.’ But what I really realized is that I just don’t want them to not have a childhood. If they were to go into acting in an appropriate age, I’d be, like, the most supportive, fiercest lion for it. … Now I’m like, ‘If you want to do that and go into theater in high school and do that for a living, I’m behind you.’ I just want them to have, like, a normal childhood.”
The Flower Films cocreator added that it helps to know it’s a “very cool, rich time for women” in comedy.
She and Kopelman, 41, split in 2016 after four years of marriage. While Barrymore admitted in December 2018 that coparenting with the art consultant is “not easy,” the former couple make it work — and still “marvel” at their daughters.
