Drew Barrymore's phoned home to bring her E.T. mother to The Drew Barrymore Show.
Dee Wallace joined Drew on her talk show on April 18 to take a walk down memory lane and recall their favorite moments working together on E.T. in celebration of the film's 40th anniversary on April 21. Drew started by showing a photo of her in Dee's lap on set when she was just 7 years old.
"That was the first day on the set," Dee recalled, "and I'm sitting in this really high director's chair 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.'"
She added, "I knew you were going to be a director-producer back then."
While catching up, Drew seemed fully entranced getting to hear about set with a new perspective from the onscreen mother she held close to her heart. In fact, she remarked that she's particularly attached to the The Velveteen Rabbit, because it was a book Dee gave her as a kid.
At another point, Drew started to recount being on set with the machine that portrayed the extraterrestrial creature, when Dee chimed in to share all the moments Drew was unaware of as a child.
"ET was kept alive on set at all times," Drew said. "I would go have lunch with E.T. a lot. I saw the wires, I knew the deal."
Dee immediately interrupted saying, "Do not believe that for a moment!"
"We found you one day, and they would put E.T. in the corner when he wasn't working, and we found Drew and she's over there just talking to him," Dee said. "And from that time on, 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 went on to share how she comforted Drew before filming the death scene. "Being the mother that I am with all the kids that I work with, you were on an adjoining sound stage and 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 explained that 7-year-old Drew was confident in understanding that E.T. was not real, telling her, '"I know Dee. Do you think I'm stupid?'"
Dee said she picked Drew up and brought her to set, and when Drew saw E.T., Dee recalled her crying, "'Ah! He's dying, Dee. He's dying!'"
Though Drew didn't remember everything about her time on set, Dee's stories showed proved she was always looking out for the child star.
"You were always so kind to me," Drew said. "I'm so thrilled that you would come her today and grace us with your presence and tell use these stories and this is just such a fortunate moment for myself thank you everybody that's bearing witness to it."