Barrymore: airline interview quotes are a flight of fancy

THE interview with actress Drew Barrymore published in Egyptair’s inflight magazine was strange from its opening lines.

After detailing how the 43-year-old had been divorced several times and was “unstable in her relationships most of her life”, the article speculated that her “behaviour is only natural since she lacked the male role model in her life after her parents’ divorce”.

When the interview went viral online, it not only bewildered readers but also Barrymore herself, who denied ever speaking to the magazine.

The story, published in Egyptair’s Horus magazine, was riddled with grammatical mistakes and strange quotes. “I cannot deny that women made a great achievement over [the] past century, there is significant progress recorded by people who study women status throughout history,” she is quoted as replying to a question about women in society.

At another point she encourages any woman who is overweight “to work on regaining her beauty and body, it is not as hard as one may think”.

Egyptair disputed that the interview was fake, saying it was “a professional magazine interview”.

Chris Miller, the president of Barrymore’s production company, said the quotes appeared to be based on a press conference Barrymore held with the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, a collective of international journalists.

A version of the article also appeared in an Arabic publication, raising the possibility that the quotes had been translated from English to Arabic and then back to English, which might explain the awkward syntax.