Three months after attending Britney Spears‘ wedding, Drew Barrymore, 47, finally revealed how her friendship with the pop star started. During the Sept. 12 episode of The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, Drew said, “I made friends with Britney about a year and a half ago, and we sort of had some secret exchanges. And I know that sounds nefarious. It was exactly the opposite”.
“It was very connective and honest and we’ve both been through a lot of things,” the daytime talk show host said, as she further explained that she and Britney talked about their “parallels” and “unique circumstance” of growing up in the entertainment industry. “The feelings of growing up, struggling, all the stuff that we’ve both gone through is something that I felt connected to her [about]. And I’m not a real reach-out kind of person, you know, I’m not Hollywood Bob, I’m not slick.”
Drew said she felt “compelled” to reach out to Britney because of the “humanity in what she was going through, [while] trying to get her freedom back”. At the time, Britney was fighting to end her controversial 13-year conservatorship, which was terminated in Nov. 2021. “We found a deep connection there. There’s a human being at the center of this, so we made friends. Like, genuine friends.”
Drew wasn’t the only celebrity to attend Britney’s wedding. She was also joined by Madonna, Paris Hilton, Donatella Versace and Selena Gomez, as she watched Britney and now-husband Sam Asghari tie the knot on June 10. When discussing the wedding, Drew told Jimmy Fallon, “It was intimate, it was fairy tale-ish. It was very sweet, there was no press. It was the way [Spears] wanted to do it. She did the ceremony, we got right to the dance party. We had the best time.”