Alyssa Milano: "I Did What I Had to Do to Continue Working" in Hollywood

please welcome alyssa milano you i have to tell you first of all i wish i was there so i could hug you no but second of all like and look at us i mean i was trying to figure out it's been about 35 years that we've both been in each other's circles which is that's exactly right and i immediately hearken back to a story i don't know how old we were maybe 12 um we were both at a carnival at i think was at notre dame high school in the valley wow and you were wearing a pair of jeans and on the butt it you would sharpie you can look but don't touch come on i am not kidding and i was like i love that you're like confident to say like i know you want to look but you're bold which is so foretelling of the woman you became which is but you can't touch and that's right you know you you were someone i admired too i loved you on your show you were beautiful uh you know the girls loved you the boys loved you you were having a big singing career also simultaneously you were you know checking a lot of boxes you were international and then i feel like and tell me what your perspective on this was there was definitely a certain point after we were 12 13 14 where i decided i wanted to change a narrative that i wasn't a young kid anymore um and sort of yeah it's it's interesting because when i think about that time a few first of all when i'm looking at britney spears going through her uh re-awakening right now on instagram i think about that she is doing what what she would have done had she had control of her life at like 18 or 19 or 20 years old right it seems like she's going through this like here i am which is what we were and i kind of feel like you know in the 90s everything was hypersexualized but also for me those were the roles i was offered like it wasn't interesting for people to hire me to keep my clothes on because that was just samantha miceli for 300 episodes yeah so i feel like i did what i had to do to continue working as sad as as that was it's such a different time now i mean could you imagine any of the poison ivy movies that we were both in we have two i know we have okay first of all we were both amy fisher yes that's true um and in fact i think we have clips uh oh i'm excited me too i haven't seen this since i'm excited okay roll the clips i have proof i found this in my little sister's bed he hands these out all the time it doesn't prove anything look okay i have proof i found this this in her bed i gotta say you win on the accent there's no question about that well that was real okay i'm from brooklyn so i can go into it really easily you really when i'm pissed and a little drunk forget it i am so new york when i used to i love that i love that and then we both decided to double down on poison ivy yes well you led the way thank you for that i was really trying to prove you know that i wasn't the little girl in et anymore yeah but it was but i think that was what we were we were those were the options we were given like i always say if i if i had the option of doing you know poison ivy ii and beetlejuice obviously i would have chosen beetlejuice but those were the things that were offered to me i auditioned for beetlejuice and didn't get it me too me too god if only we had like our audition tapes to put up side by side and i am happy that you know we are parents now ourselves um and boy i definitely feel a lot of the effects of the way that i grew up in my parenting isn't that wild what is it like for you well i mean my daughter's seven right now and she she looks a lot like i did at seven and that's when i started working so i have this fierce need to protect her and give her maybe what i felt like i was lacking um and it's it's pretty profound and it really didn't my my issues of growing up in the business really didn't surface um until i had my first child and it was because i just had this reflection of these little people looking back at me and i i just i never felt that i had that same kind of security that hopefully i'm giving to them like even though my parents are incredible um they're really they've been married for 55 years they're really incredible but the industry for young people is look we're the only industry that still allows child labor right it's like entertainment industries singers everywhere else it is it is ruled unfair to make children work yeah so i think there is always that feeling of not feeling completely safe and i have the best circumstances with you know incredible parents and tony and judith and catherine just being you know incredible role models but it was it was hard and to go through puberty on tv i mean it was hard it was hard i am amazed at what an activist you've become i've been reading your book and it's just so interesting i mean what gave you the courage to fight for what your right is well thank you for for reading the book and for the opportunity to to answer this question because it was when i was 15 years old there's a little boy named ryan white and he was hiv positive and they kicked him out of school because this was a time when there was so much stigma surrounding hiv and they made it seem like he could get kids could get hiv from just casual contact and he and i became friends and he asked me to go on the phil donahue show which just it was like the oprah back in the day and kiss him to prove that you couldn't get hiv aids from casual contact and i did and that moment it did a lot for me um first of all it it made my fame make sense to me it never made sense before that moment i wasn't comfortable with it yep and and it just became part of the job almost in a way because without it i felt like being an actor didn't didn't fulfill my my soul and my being so um yeah so that was it i was i was 15 and obviously it's changed over the years uh you know in 2000 i lived in south africa for three months and then i became a unicef ambassador and then social media happened and it became a lot more easy to to to be an activist and to be a community organizer and to organize for issues that i thought were important well when i look at your body of activism it is tireless it is across many different subjects and i'm really impressed with how much you are invested in this and how much you give and how much you really live that genuine life and i commend you for it and i have tremendous respect for the human and activists and mother and woman that you have grown into and i'm so glad that ryan white asked you to do that and your life since then has just been very authentic and was so excited to promote your new upcoming book sorry not sorry which is also the name of this very powerful podcast that you started in 2019 and i'm in complete admiration thank you for that [Music]

Channel: The Drew Barrymore Show

Views: 690,937

Keywords: Interviews, Entertainment, drew barrymore, drew barrymore show, drew barrymore talk show, drew show, drew, drew barrymore flower beauty, interview, drew barrymore films, drew barrymore e.t., drew barrymore news, drew barrymore career, talk show, alyssa milano, alyssa milano 2021, alyssa milano interview

Id: RxKGEWHyMNY

Length: 9min 22sec (562 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 27 2021