On The Late Show, Hollywood vet Drew Barrymore urges women to earn the moment 

Coming from someone else, Barrymore’s words might seem discouraging, or even condescending. (And even still…) But the battle-scarred lifelong performer certainly has a perspective few women in Hollywood can boast, with Colbert noting that her Flower Films (begun in 1995, when Barrymore was 19) made her one of the first women with her own (still successful) production company. Indeed, Barrymore cited the current exposure of a toxic, male-dominated entertainment culture as “phenomenal, overdue, and wonderful,” even as she admonished those women who aren’t ready to put in the hard work to take advantage of the moment. Doors may be opening, she said, but warned women in her industry to “leave no doubt or favors to be asked.”

Barrymore did talk Santa Clarita Diet, telling Colbert that her liver-eating zombie character’s bloody deeds help satisfy her “dark side,” and that she first discovered the liberating nature of (fictional) violence way back when she starred in 1984's Firestarter. Speaking of her 9-year-old self, she told Colbert that, even then, she was meeting people in the business she’d like to blow up with a well-aimed fireball. She and Colbert talked about her long history as a show biz “free spirit” and “bohemian,” with the interview concluding with, of all things, a poetry reading. Of infamously disreputable poet and novelist Charles Bukowski, no less, as Barrymore read out Bukowski’s poem “So Now?,” with its final couplet of echoing aging, loss, and the wisdom that comes from deep regret. Again, all things that the resiliently sunny Barrymore probably knows as much as anyone.