Drew Barrymore on Being 'Touchy' With Guests: ‘People Have to Warn Me’

Drew Barrymore says she's been told off to "back off" from touching guests on her talk show.

On Tuesday’s episode of The Drew Barrymore Show, guest Cynthia Erivo explained how she and her Wicked co-star Ariana Grande often used touch, like holding hands and subtle squeezes, to silently send each other messages and maintain a close bond while filming the movie or on the subsequent press run.

“Is it true that [Grande] is as touchy? I'm so touchy,” asked Barrymore, 49. “People have to warn me, they're like, ‘Back off a little bit.’ And I’m like, ‘Why?’”

“I’m the welcoming Capricorn,” Erivo joked. “It's like, ‘I love you. You can touch.’”

Barrymore has received mixed reactions for getting physically close with the guests who appear on her show. A clip of the actress caressing Oprah Winfrey went viral last year and sparked conversations online about boundaries.

Despite telling Entertainment Tonight in August that she would “try to practice physical distance,” Barrymore made headlines after guest Martha Stewart playfully shoved her away.

“That’s how I want life to be,” Barrymore told Erivo. “Because physical connection: I'm single. I'm not dating anyone. I don't have that in my life, but I don't know how I would ever hold back from holding hands, hugging, snuggling.”

Erivo added that people "assume that physical connection can only be romantic."

“Sometimes you can't say anything and you're in a room ... it's just a squeeze of the hand,” she said. “That's sometimes how [Grande] and I communicate, we might be talking to someone, or I might need to communicate something to her and it's just a squeeze of the hand or just a pinch of a finger, or a hug.”

A viral video of Grande and Erivo during an interview showed the actresses' silent communication in action. A journalist puzzlingly said fans were "holding space" for the Wicked song "Defying Gravity," and Erivo responded by saying she "didn't know that was happening" but noted how "powerful" the insight was.

Grande, meanwhile, grabbed hold her co-star's manicured finger, spurring memes and cropped photos of the melodramatic moment.

“However we need to communicate, it's how we need to communicate," Erivo told Barrymore. "And I think we don't give enough credit to how we communicate with our friends physically."