SPOILER WARNING: The following article contains extremely mild spoilers for Smile 2. If you have not yet seen the film and don’t wish to know anything about it prior, proceed at your own risk!
Smile 2 is a movie jam packed with a lot of horrifying surprises (we’re still processing that absolutely bonkers ending), but one of the early ones in the film isn’t of the scary variety. The very first scene introducing protagonist Skye Riley has her featured on a talk show, but it’s not just any talk show: it’s The Drew Barrymore Show. It’s a particularly fun cameo from the actor-cum-host given her history in the horror genre, and I learned how it came about earlier this month during an interview with Smile 2 writer/director Parker Finn.
I asked the filmmaker about Drew Barrymore’s surprise cameo in the new horror movie earlier this month during the pre-release Los Angeles press day, and he explained that the idea came about as part of an effort to conjure what he referred to as “credibility” for the story’s lead character. When the audience meets Skye Riley at the start of the story, we are meant to recognize her as an established, world-renowned star – and that’s something you can simply sell by having her be interviewed by a well-known real-world talk show host. In Finn’s words,
I really, in building this pop star of Skye Riley played by Naomi Scott, wanted to lend credibility to the character and sort of blur the lines between reality and fiction and make her feel almost like she really existed in our world. And so I had this idea of introducing her on a talk show, but I was like, I want to do a real talk show.
Drew Barrymore has been hosting The Drew Barrymore Show since 2020, and Parker Finn told me that he wrote the early scene in Smile 2 with her in mind. He wrote to her, including the script pages, hoping that she might take the part, and he was delighted to get a yes. The writer/director continued:
I love Drew Barrymore and I wrote the scene and then I sent it to her and I also wrote a letter to her and she was so gracious and said yes, and it was it was such a like fun dream to get to work with her and to do that.
Not only does the scene in question very much do its job in terms of selling Skye Riley as a superstar, the film also expands Drew Barrymore’s longstanding clout in the horror genre. Some of her earliest roles were starring in what are in retrospect two underrated Stephen King films – Firestarter and Cat’s Eye – and she later played one of the most iconic and memorable roles in the Scream franchise. Most recently, she starred opposite Timothy Olyphant as an undead cannibal in the fantastic, cancelled-too-soon Netflix series Santa Clarita Diet, and she also had an uncredited voice role in 2022’s Scream. Her career is very different now than it was just five years ago, but it’s awesome that she is continuing to make scary movies.
Riding high on a wave of great critical buzz, Smile 2 arrived in theaters this past weekend and opened at number one at the box office – though if you’ve already seen it, you may want to check it out again, as Parker Finn has promised there are details you missed during your first viewing.
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