Drew Barrymore Says She Was in ‘Dark and Fearful Place’ During Divorce

Drew Barrymore opened up about the dark period in her life after her divorce from Will Kopelman, telling the TODAY Show‘s Willie Geist that she even stopped looking for acting gigs after the split.

“I was not looking for a job,” the 43-year-old Barrymore said in an interview for Sunday Today. “I had actually stopped acting for several years because I wanted to raise my kids. But then a shift happened in my life and I was separating from their father and it was just a very difficult time.”

Barrymore said the split led her to a “very dark and fearful place.” But when she received the script for Netflix‘s horror-comedy Santa Clarita Diet, she suddenly found a project she wanted to work on.

“I was like, ‘Yeah I don’t think this is a good time’ and ironically, I think it taught me a valuable life lesson,” she told Geist in a preview clip shared with PEOPLE Magazine.

She continued, “Sometimes when you think something is the worst timing and the worst idea, it can actually become the thing that saves you and pulls you out and gives you a new focus, and empowerment, and switches your constant stuck way of thinking and feeling and put[s] it into something else that might actually get you to a healthier place faster.”

Barrymore also told James Corden on The Late Late Show that her “life was kind of falling apart” when she began working on Santa Clarita Diet. She was 145 lbs., and a woman once asked if she was expecting.

“When I first started the show, I was 145 lbs. and my life was kind of falling apart,” she said. “And I said, ‘Victor [Fresco, the show’s executive producer], can I lose 20 lbs. over the course of the show, and change my eyebrows and the height of my shoes and the body language and attitude and go from someone who’s kind of naïve and unhappy to someone who’s empowered and alive?’ And he said yes, and so I got to make that transformation.”

Barrymore successfully dropped the 20 pounds during filming, and said she is a vegan during production. But once she stops filming, she admitted to “pigging out.”

Barrymore’s interview with Geist airs during Sunday Today on NBC, which begins at 7 a.m. ET.

The new season of Santa Clarita Diet is now available on Netflix. The show stars Timothy Olyphant as Barrymore’s husband, and centers on a family trying to help Barrymore’s Sheila after she becomes a zombie.

Barrymore and Kopeland were married from 2012 to 2016. They have two daughters, Olive and Frankie.

Photo credit: Getty