Steven Spielberg’s E.T. arrived in theaters in 1982, almost immediately becoming the highest-grossing film of all time and maintaining the title for over a decade. But the true lasting impact of the blockbuster is rooted in the close bonds formed within its cast. On the latest episode of the Drew Barrymore Show, the actress and host reunited with co-stars Henry Thomas, Dee Wallace, and Robert Macnaughton in celebration of the film’s 40th anniversary.
“Steven Spielberg, he cast me as Gertie when I was just five years old, and that changed my life,” Barrymore explained to the audience. “He gave me a purpose and a clear understanding of love and respect. He gave me a family that changed my perception on family forever. The cast, Robert and Henry and Dee, I truly became a family with them.”
She added: “We were very protective, very nurturing. Steven was our patriarch for sure, I considered him like a father. I didn’t have one growing up and he still feels like that to me to this day and I always carry the message of this film. I think it is so much a part of who I am and why I am this way, because this movie is about how we should always fight for the things we love, and just because something or someone is different, unfamiliar, we shouldn’t be afraid to protect that, we shouldn’t turn our backs on that, we should embrace our differences and learn from each other.”
The Drew Barrymore Show set had been transformed into a forest with stills from the set of E.T. and the film’s subsequent premieres and events, serving as a hyper-nostalgic backdrop to the cast as they traded stories about their time creating the film. In one instance, Thomas and Macnaughton recalled Barrymore’s mission to make everyone on set her boyfriend, if only for a day.
“One day it was Tommy Howell, and then the next day it would be Henry, and then me one day, Casey, Sean,” Macnaughton joked, Thomas adding: “The funny thing was though, we all kind of took it seriously, you know we were like, ‘Oh Drew’s eating lunch with Tommy today. Guess I’m out.’” The short-lived romance worked out for Macnaughton in the end. As he remembers it, Barrymore set him up on a blind date with his now-wife Bianca Hunter in the eighties. After going to see E.T. together, the pair lost touch and later reconnected in 2010.
Wallace’s story about her experience with the film also leaned into the unexpected. Of course, no one could have known E.T. would become the massive box office hit that it did, the actress who played Mary Taylor was convinced after her first time seeing it that she had reached the end of the road for her career.
“The first time I saw it was at Universal with all the producers and executives, and I was sitting at the back, and nobody reacted to anything,” Wallace remembered. “I ran home, and I said to my husband, ‘Oh Christopher, I think my career is over,’ and he took my hand and he said, ‘Come on. We’re going to go see it with an audience,’ and people were screaming and crying and standing up and yelling, and he turned around to me and said, ‘What do you think now, sweetheart?’”
Even now, 40 years later, Barrymore joked that she carries a piece of the film with her in the form of her now 10-year-old daughter. “First of all, Olive when she was born, looked identical to E.T.,” she told her castmates. “I kept sending pictures to Steven. I was tripping out. I was like, ‘I have given birth to E.T.’ and the older she grew and the bigger, the eyes went wider apart. I would send him pictures like, ‘Do you see? I gave birth to E.T.’”