The Drew Barrymore Show: 'Night Thoughts' Star Kumail Nanjiani; Memory Bank with Valerie Bertinelli

"Night Thoughts" Star Kumail Nanjiani

Memory Bank with Valerie Bertinelli

Air Date: Wednesday, January 14^th

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Photo Credit: The Drew Barrymore Show/Ash Bean

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Videos:

Memory Bank: Drew Gets Emotional Revisiting Picture of Herself at 10-Years-Old

https://www.instagram.com/p/DTfxSLjEdBp/

https://app.cimediacloud.com/r/kY7bOocJEYCh

Drew: My picture actually is like the beginning for me. OK, so that's me at 10. And by the way, good news, guess what? I was wearing a tie back then. So I am who I am. This is not a gimmick. I really, I've always preferred dressing in men's clothing. I love to wear a dress on the red carpet.

It feels so Cinderella fantasy, but I'm just more comfortable like this, and I always have been.

the thing that this picture, it just breaks my heart. It just, I was 10 years old and I just was told by everybody, you don't look like you did in ET. You're too heavy. You're not blonde enough, you're not old enough, you're too young, you're not tall, and everybody just started getting involved in the way I looked at 10 and it had been going on for a few years at this point and I just, you know, it's just, there's like the look in the eyes is like, I don't know what I'm supposed to be for other people, and you don't know yourself at ten, so I just, you know, what I am so relieved about now is that it's 4 decades later. I'm 50, I'm 10 there, but I do know what's important now, and the look in my eyes is so clear. And it's just so nice to know that no matter how low it gets or how much pressure we feel or how unproud of ourselves or how we are not pleasing to someone else or we're not fitting into some mold that someone created for us or maybe even a panel of people that we may never really know, that real true happiness is just this choice we make and we fight for it and it is a battle and a beautiful internal war that we fight on the front lines day in and day out to get to a place where we actually can say this sentence and believe it which is I deserve happiness and that if it takes you a long time to figure out it's OK. As long as we learn it at some point and for all young people out there, if you feel pressured to be a certain way, you are not alone. I have been there with you, and it is not a comfortable feeling and somehow, some way on the other side of that is like kind of adulthood and a personal freedom and a desire to stop pleasing everybody else and start realizing what it's gonna take for you to feel good about yourself no matter what you look like or feel like and I will say this everyone's gonna go through a physical, spiritual identity crisis, maybe even a few times throughout your life, but it's gonna hit you at some point and I'm really glad that I got it out of the way early. It crept up again at 40. I thought I had seen everything. Yes, but I pulled myself out of that one too, and the person you have to rely on is yourself. It's what you can control and it's actually no matter where you are and what anyone says or does to you, you have, I didn't know this then and I can see it in her eyes, but I know it now, you don't have to take it in. You have an absolute boundary that you can lay down and say you are not allowed to eat away at my happiness. Only I get to do that. So sorry, but I'm no longer like anyone else's.

I'm just mine and me, and at whatever point I got to realize that and it wasn't that long ago really. It did take 4 decades since this moment, but that girl is OK and it's so scary when you don't know if you're going to be OK. And again that will crop up several times in your life, but it will be if you have the ability to rescue yourself. So I'm really glad that I look at that now and I am not broken anymore and if you break you will fix yourself.

Memory Bank: Val On How She Was Feeling at Her Hollywood Walk of Fame Ceremony

https://app.cimediacloud.com/r/H0OEDB8ByWeC

Ross: Look at you, Val. You're God, you're so beautiful.

Valerie: And I felt so horrified. I, it was, such a joyful day. This was back in, I, I don't know what year it was, 2012, and, I had just, I had started, a diet program and then became their spokesperson in 2007, and I had lost 50 pounds, and then, life started to get the better of me.

And I wasn't taking care of my mental and emotional health, so the weight started to come back on. And this was the last year I believe that I was with this diet company and they fired me. Eventually they said we can't keep going with you because you're gaining weight again. And this is a size 12, and I remember thinking, but size 12's not that big. It's just, but I had gotten down to a size 4, so which was way too small for me and impossible for me to maintain, and I have been up and down, but pretty much basically this weight my whole life that I am right now, and I'm a size 10 now, and I would have been horrified then being on the diet program being a size 10, but right now the thing that that it's about my mental and emotional health and my mental and emotional health, even though I'm getting teary eyed is so strong right now. I'm so strong and firm in who I am and no matter what people throw at me, I know who I am and I know what kind of person I am and it doesn't matter how much I weigh. What matters is who I am, how I treat people, period. And I still have that dress too. I still have the dress and it fits me just fine. It's a little less snug than it is there, but I just want, if anything, it doesn't matter what size we are, what is our heart? What is, how do we treat people, period.

Drew: I think, I hope that we've also come some distance between just saying skinny and fat as opposed to like, what is healthy for you.

Valerie: You're right, what is healthy for you, what is healthy mentally, spiritually, emotionally, physically.

Drew: I'm figuring that out.

Kumail Nanjiani & Drew on Night Thoughts

https://app.cimediacloud.com/r/3WTMQEF1UgNUKumail: I'm a dynamic sleeper, you know, like dynamic. We're actors, so whatever's happening in the nightmare I'm doing with my body. I'm running from things. I'm jumping off things.

Drew: That's like my dog Douglas when he's in bed, his legs start going because I don't know what he's dreaming about, but he's chasing something.

Kumail: Do you have, do you have night thoughts?

Drew: I do. Oh God, I relate to this so much and especially the second you get in the bed, it's like cue the stress nd you talk about it too, like the what did I say or did I say this in a way that's ingratiating enough? Was it effusive and emphatic and, and loving enough because I didn't feel like I loved enough, so maybe I need to love some more.

Kumail: Yeah, first one I talk about is, you know, when I'm in the middle of the night, I'm like, oh, that person emailed me and I said, hey, hey, good to hear from you. Should I have said great to hear from you? And I'm up for 2 hours just thinking about that. I should email them right now and say I meant great. I didn't mean good.

Kumail & Drew on Looking Back on Their Younger Selves

https://app.cimediacloud.com/r/WeHdCEyohfve

Kumail: Growing up, I did not like that my dad would cry in front of me. Even as a kid I was like, oh that's not what men do, men should not be doing that. And it took me years to realize, you know, I, knew, you know, in my teens I was like I felt very sensitive. My feelings would get hurt all the time, and I hated that about myself. I hated how sensitive I was, how easily I'd be hurt.

I had bullies and it would just hurt my feelings, and then all my 20s and 30s, I was like, I'm stronger. Things don't hurt my feelings anymore, and now in my 40s I've realized, no, things still do hurt my feelings, and I've been just like pushing it down. And that's why I would have like anger issues every now and then because I'd push it down and anger, you know, is considered strength, it's considered like a manly thing like even if you know, you watch men watching sports, even happiness to turn into anger it's like yeah like they get like really angry, you know, it's like the only way that men are taught to be emotionally communicative is through anger.

and I think, so that's why I wanted to talk about that. I realized just as I started actually it was when I started taking acting classes, I was like, oh, there's a lot more inside of here that I'm not, comfortable expressing that I'm not connected with and so realizing that, oh, I do get my feelings hurt. I do get scared about my, about a lot of things like you have a new job starting what if they find out I'm not any good? What if they fire me all this stuff. And now I've decided, you know, I would keep that inside and not tell anybody and now I tell Emily I'm like, hey, I just wanna let you know I have this new job coming up and I'm kind of scared that I'm not gonna do a good job at it, you know.

Drew: And what will she say?

Kumail: I used to think that the parts of me that I didn't like I had to keep hidden from her and I realized that showing the parts of me that I don't like just makes her love me more. That's true.

And I realized, you know, now I'm, I'm 47, I realized like I'm the exact person I was when I was 14, only difference is now I like that guy, now I like the guy, you know, the 14-year-old who's still here.

Drew: I just showed a picture of my 10-year-old self, and she was just in so much pain. And at 50 now, 4 decades later, I'm like, oh my goodness, I didn't understand that we're supposed to be OK and allowed to have empathy for ourselves. We're just struggling so hard to get through life and be something for some invisible entity and home, you know, where the people that you love and trust are that you've taken this long period of time to invest in is the place that matters the most and the garden you want to tend to.