The cast of Dear Evan Hansen was interviewed on Drew Barrymore's talk show with a twist: she performed the interview as her Never Been Kissed character Josie Geller. The movie, which premiered this weekend, is a film adaptation of the popular Broadway show from songwriters Benj Pasek and Justin Paul. It stars Ben Platt as the title character. After his classmate Connor dies by suicide, Evan Hansen creates a false story about being friends with him through a series of misunderstandings, becoming increasingly entangled with Connor’s family in the process.
The Dear Evan Hansen movie comes from a long tradition of high school films, including Drew Barrymore's Never Been Kissed. In that 1999 film, Barrymore stars as Josie Geller, an awkward 25-year-old copy editor who hasn't had her first kiss. She is tasked with going undercover at the local high school for a story, and in the process, she falls in love with a hunky teacher played by Michael Vartan.
The classic rom-com has been getting a lot of play on The Drew Barrymore Show lately. After reprising the role on TikTok, the star organized a Never Been Kissed reunion earlier this month and has now fully wrenched Josie Geller from the world of fiction into real life. On a recent episode, Barrymore interviewed the cast of Dear Evan Hansen as Josie. In the clip, Josie Geller sits down with a visibly uncomfortable Julianne Moore, Amy Adams, Danny Pino, Amandla Stenberg, and Ben Platt and asks them questions about their high school experience. Check out the full video below:
The Josie Geller that interviews the cast is actually the character from the flashbacks when she was in high school rather than the undercover adult Josie from the rest of the film. Although the way she's interviewing the cast is undeniably strange, she does get some interesting tidbits from the actors. After discussing how the musical was performed live on set, the cast discusses their prom experiences, and Ben Platt revealed that he went to prom with his Merrily We Roll Along co-star Beanie Feldstein.
The layers of meta go extremely deep in this interview. Although Barrymore clearly isn't interested in explicitly touching on this topic, there has been a lot of media buzz surrounding Ben Platt's casting in Dear Evan Hansen because the actor is considerably older than the high school-aged character. Presumably, Never Been Kissed was chosen as a good fit because it's about an adult masquerading as a teenager, but the avoidance of that topic just adds another layer of strange to what is already a deeply peculiar video.
Source: The Drew Barrymore Show