Drew Barrymore almost teared up when she saw her E.T. onscreen mom Dee Wallace again after so many years.
The Golden Globe winner, 47, reunited with Dee Wallace, who played her mother in 1982’s E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, on the occasion of the film’s 40th anniversary.
“That was the first day on the set and I’m sitting in this really high director’s chair,” Wallace, 73, recalled of a photo of the two of them. “And Drew comes up to me and she says, ‘Hi, I’m going to sit on your lap now.’ And I said, ‘Well, come on up Drew.'”
“I mean, I knew you were going to be a director/producer back then,” she told Barrymore.
Barrymore said Wallace looked incredibly “sexy” in the cheetah costume her character wore for the Halloween scene. “I still fit in it too,” Wallace proclaimed.
“Oh, I bet you do,” Barrymore told her. “You are giving me goals!”
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Wallace recounted finding a young Barrymore in the corner one day, striking up a conversation with the inactive puppet. “From that time on, [director Steven Spielberg] had two guys on E.T. at all times, so that any time you went over to talk to him, his eyes could work and his head could go up and down and he could respond to you,” she said.
The Cujo star also recalled Barrymore’s emotional connection to E.T., which resulted in a tearful reaction to seeing the character on his deathbed.
“Being the mother that I am with all the kids that I work with … I went over and I said, ‘OK Drew, now we’re going to go shoot the scene where E.T.’s dying, but you know he’s not really dying sweetheart. He’s acting, just like we are, OK?'” she said. “And you looked at me and you said, ‘I know, Dee. Do you think I’m stupid?’
“So, I picked you up, we walked into the set. You took one look at E.T. and went (crying) ‘Ah, he’s dying, Dee! He’s dying,'” Wallace explained with a laugh.