Drew Barrymore spoke to Selma Blair about the truth behind death threats once sent to her from a person pretending to be Blair.
Blair wrote about the shocking events in her recent memoir, Mean Baby: A Memoir of Growing Up.
Now, sitting down with Barrymore on her self-titled talk show, Blair gave further context to the staggering claims.
“I was very close to my mother. And my father and I went in and out of having some friendships, we never really clicked. Because he did something so unthinkable to me, I would never call him Dad again,” Blair said.
Early in her career, Blair landed a small film role and called her father to tell him the exciting news.
Shortly after, Blair said the film’s producers told her that they were receiving letters from someone “claiming to be an agent” who falsely informed them that Blair “was a heroin addict”.
“It was a real kind of poison pen letter about me,” Blair said. “They fired me before even shooting, and were lovely to me, but explained ‘We just don’t know what’s going on, the liability. We don’t believe this but...’”
“I didn’t know where it was coming from,” Blair admitted, adding that she thought it might have been someone “who disliked me in high school”.
Blair recalled hearing from a detective a year later who said: “‘We know this is not you... but someone has been writing letters to Drew Barrymore, many poison pen letters, signed by Selma Blair’”.
Eventually, Blair said she found out that it was “someone involved with my father”.
When she finished the story, Barrymore assured Blair that she had never received the letters personally, and that she hadn’t learned about them until later.
“Then I received your book and then I was like, ‘F*** this, I’m going after her, I want to heal this moment,’” Barrymore said. “Because it wasn’t real for me on my side because I would never doubt you and actually have been a total fan of yours on the side.”
