Brooke Shields and Drew Barrymore are commiserating about their overbearing mothers.
The former child actors emotionally chronicled their youths in the limelight during Tuesday’s episode of “The Drew Barrymore Show,” where the host revealed her mother “wanted to be with the people I was with” — and asked if Shields’ mother, Teri Shields, did the same to her.
“No, because she was in love with me,” Shields told Barrymore during the interview. “I was her main focus. And both of us were gonna be cut off from our sexuality. I was gonna stay a virgin. She was going to be just Teri Terrific.”
Barrymore, who shot to worldwide fame after starring in Steven Spielberg’s 1982 classic “E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial,” claimed her own mother, Jaid Barrymore, “was so enamored” with her famous daughter that she wanted to date Barrymore’s Hollywood flings herself.
“I don’t get it, but I get it,” Shields commiserated. “It’s so layered and it’s so needy. And it’s so sad and broken.”
Shields has been on a press run for “Pretty Baby: Brooke Shields,” a Hulu documentary named after a 1978 film in which she played a 12-year-old who is abused in the sex trade, and recently reflected on posing for infamously suggestive Calvin Klein ads in her youth and participating in exploitative interviews.
“We all were aspiring to get approval from our mommies and daddies,” Shields told Barrymore during their conversation.
“You either spend your life running away from, running towards, trying to not be like, trying to be like, your mother,” she continued. “And it’s primal. And you gotta go through the process of it. And it’s just a lot of work.”
Shields told Barrymore that her mother sat in during every interview she gave as a child star. Shields, who revealed last month that she was sexually assaulted in her 20s by a powerful Hollywood executive, said her mom was adamant.
“‘No one’s going to get you,’” Shields said of her mother’s mission. “‘I’m going to be there. I’m there first. You’re mine. I’m not going to give you to somebody.’ Under the guise of protection, but it was more ownership and fear, I think.”
“Pretty Baby: Brooke Shields” is available on Hulu.