If there are two celebrities who can instantly put a smile on someone's face, they've got to be Drew Barrymore and Whoopi Goldberg. The immensely talented actresses are celebrated for being authentic and honest about everything, even the stuff they'd rather hide. Case in point: Whoopi recently sat down for an interview for Drew's upcoming daytime series, The Drew Barrymore Show, and the conversation quickly turned to their mutual embarrassment about their own surprise marriages.
Drew and Whoopi were in the midst of talking about the film they starred in together, 1995's Boys on the Side, when Drew pivoted the conversation entirely:
"By the way, sidebar, when I had to show up on the set of Boys on the Side and tell you I got married over the weekend? Talk about shame. Like, 'Yeah, no, I wasn't really talking about this guy last week, but I'm married to him now. So happy Monday."
Whoopi loved the sudden change in topic and even had her own story to share.
After Drew noted, "I was, I was embarrassed because I care about what you think," Whoopi quickly reassured her that she had definitely been there.
"You'll remember that I did that also, pretty much the same way," Whoopi said.
Whoopi then relived how she broke the news of her own surprise marriage to her coworkers:
"'Hey, yes, I'm here. No, no, I did get married. What's his name? Wait a minute, I know it — but let's finish with what you're talking about and we'll get to what his name is.'"
Drew piped in, "It's a real 'how-was-you-weekend?' moment!"
Drew married LA bar owner Jeremy Thomas in 1994, when she was 19 and he was 31. The two barely knew one another but decided to dive right in. "Usually people live together first and then get married," she said at the time. "I guess we're doing it the old-fashioned way. Kind of."
Drew and Jeremy ended up divorcing two months later.
Drew was also married to comedian Tom Green for two years. At the time, she was enthusiastic about their match: "I want our kids to have someone to roll their eyes with when Mom and Dad are being totally lame and goofy."
Tom filed for divorce in 2001, noting, "Drew is a wonderful woman. I love her very much. I wish our marriage could have worked out. I wish her much happiness."
Drew and her third husband, Will Kopelman, divorced after four years of marriage. They are parents to two daughters, Frankie and Olive. A source close to the couple noted that they had been struggling for a while, especially as they kept disagreeing about where their family of four should live.
Whoopi married her first husband, Alvin Martin, in 1973. The pair share a daughter, Alexandra, who was born in the same year.
In 2019, she spoke to The New York Times about her struggles with what marriage was supposed to feel like.
"I'd be thinking, why don't I feel the thing that I'm supposed to? Then one day I thought: I don't have to do this. I don't have to conform. I tried marriage, and it wasn't for me. You can't be in a marriage because everybody's expecting you to."
Following her divorce, Whoopi and Alexandra moved to Los Angeles. Both have spoken about how Whoopi struggled as a single mom in a city that can swallow people whole, and Whoopi explained that she was willing to take any job she could, including a stint as a bricklayer:
"Well, I needed the money, and I needed to work. So I figured I would rather lay bricks than lay men for money."
Whoopi married for a second time, this time to cinematographer David Claessen. The marriage lasted from 1986 to 1988, and neither has ever given a reason for their split. Whoopi has noted that she definitely fell prey to the societal forces that often pressure a lot of women into marriage:
"Look, people expect you to have a boyfriend. They expect you to get married. So I kept trying to do that, but I didn't want to share information with somebody else. I didn't want anybody asking me why I was doing what I was doing, or to have to make the other person feel better. But if you're in a relationship, you have to do those things, and it took me a while to figure out that I didn't want to."
Whoopi's third and final marriage was to Lyle Trachtenberg. It began in 1994 and ended the following year. Ultimately, she says that she learned something about herself through each of her relationships:
"It took me some time but I realized that trying to turn myself into something I wasn't ready for, for a man, wasn't his fault. It was mine. My marriages failed and I was the common denominator. My commitment was never that strong. I can say now that I was never really in love. The realization freed me up. I love men and men love me. I'm lucky that way. I just feel bad that it took me so long to realize that I wasn't meant to be in a relationship."
