Drew Barrymore Opens up About Breast Cancer Scare

Drew Barrymore is opening up about her recent breast cancer scare after getting a “bad” mammogram.

The talk show host and actress shared the story of her health scare during Monday’s episode of The Drew Barrymore Show during a candid conversation about cancer with comedian and breast cancer survivor Tig Notaro.

“This is the thing I’ve wanted to risk talking about on this show because I recently had a scare,” Barrymore, 50, told Notaro, who was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2012.

“I’m completely fine, but I did get a bad mammogram, and I got taken into that room, and then I had an emergency biopsy and I waited for those for five days,” Barrymore said of awaiting her biopsy results. Notaro, 54, acknowledged, “It’s a long wait.”

Barrymore then asked about Notaro’s own breast cancer journey, which included double mastectomy surgery. “How did you calm yourself? How did you make peace with it?” she asked.

“It cracked me open, completely,” Notaro answered in an emotional moment between the two. “I went from being somebody that held everything to myself … I was going to do it on my own and [said], ‘I’m OK.’”

“Even when I came back from surgery — I had a double mastectomy — and my closest friends were settling in to stay with me, and I was like, ‘Oh, I’m fine.’ I couldn’t even lift my arms,” the Handsome podcast host continued. “They were like, ‘You’re all set, Tig?’ and I was like, ‘Yep, I’m all set. You guys can just head out now.’”

Notaro then encouraged other people going through similar struggles to reach out to their loved ones for help. “What I can’t encourage people enough to do is get over any sort of feeling that you can’t ask for help, or to act like you don’t need anybody, like I was doing,” the comedian noted. “It was the greatest gift you can give yourself and the people that love you, because people want to help, people want to do good. It changed my life.”

Elsewhere in their conversation, Barrymore revealed that she was moved by Notaro’s recent documentary, Come See Me in the Good Light, which follows poets Andrea Gibson and her wife, Megan Falley, following Gibson’s terminal ovarian cancer diagnosis.

Notaro described the film as “a very intimate portrait of a wildly inspiring beautiful person at the end of life with a beautiful, beautiful partner who is also a poet,” as Barrymore praised the project as a realistic portrait of cancer’s impact.

“This documentary also gives you such an intimate portrait not only of these people’s lives, but what the journey of going through cancer is like, and it is not heavy,” she explained. “There’s a confidence, a courage, a strength, a reality, a humanity.”

Come See Me in the Good Light debuts on Apple TV Nov. 14.