Drew Barrymore Reveals Why She Loves Santa Clarita Diet's Blood and Guts (And What They're Made Of!)

Drew Barrymore and Timothy Olyphant debate TV guts and reveal why their TV marriage works

By Chris Harnick Mar 22, 2018 4:00 PMTags
Watch: Drew Barrymore Tells What's in the "Santa Clarita Diet"

Drew Barrymore eats brains for a living. Well, they're not exactly brains, but on Santa Clarita Diet, they're supposed to look like them.

Barrymore returns as Sheila Hammond, an undead realtor with a hunger for human flesh, in Santa Clarita Diet season two alongside Timothy Olyphant as Joel Hammond. The new season picks up right where season one ended; Shelia is still an insatiable zombie (of sorts), occasionally giving in to her hunger for humans. The result? Barrymore gets covered in fake blood, guts and all sorts of things that look like they're straight out of a zombie apocalypse.

"I like it," Barrymore told E! News. "I think it's just different. I come home from work and I can't even get in my car without going to the shower in the facilities and having to get clean or I'm going to get blood all over the car…I think this is fun."

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In real life, the guts and organs are just as unappetizing. "The most disgusting, weird stuff," Barrymore said. "And I have to act like, ‘Mmm,' it's like ecstasy, and I'm just disgusted."

Barrymore said the gross-looking items she eats are dried apples, wet cake, beet shakes, grains that "ferment, so by the time I eat them they're rotten" and "plastic rubber."

"It's not plastic rubber," Olyphant said.

"It is plastic rubber!" Barrymore maintained. "It's an edible plastic rubber. It tastes like latex. It's disgusting."

Olyphant has not tried the TV guts, but said, "I know for a fact you cannot eat plastic rubber."

"But there's an edible plastic," Barrymore continued to maintain.

The chemistry between the two is just as dynamic on screen as it is off. The actors play husband and wife who fully support one another, zombie affliction and all. On paper, the show sounds like it could be a very dark, bloody mess. Barrymore said when she met series creator Victor Fresco she wasn't sure what to think. "I don't want to do dark for dark's sake," she said. But she met Fresco and got the pitch of the show and was sold, thanks to the part of the show that people relate to: the marriage.

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Watch: Drew Barrymore & Timothy Olyphant Talk "Santa Clarita Diet"

"I think this show is about a marriage that functions and works, especially under the most difficult circumstances, but they still talk about regular domestic issues or household chores…I think in this day and age the world is so crazy they almost need a little crazy with their crazy. I just like the balance of it all," Barrymore said.

In the middle of all the craziness that comes with being and living with an undead woman, Joel watched a documentary on jugglers, much to the delight of Barrymore and Olyphant.

"I don't care how crazy your circumstances were, human beings will still continue to talk about their daily riff-raff," Barrymore said.

"I find this show to be oddly old fashioned. It's both inspired and new and fresh. There's something very old fashioned about it. Like you said once, it feels like a movie from the ‘40s or something," Olyphant said to Barrymore.

Santa Clarita Diet returns Friday, March 23 on Netflix.

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