Drew Barrymore to occupy the center square of CBS's new Hollywood Squares

America's weirdest talk show host, Drew Barrymore, will hold court over the game show revival, set to debut in January 2025

Drew Barrymore to occupy the center square of CBS's new Hollywood Squares
Photo: Gregory Pace

Drew Barrymore’s transition from movie star to TV star has been a strange and chaotic one, to say the least, with lots of oddball bumps in the road along the way. Some of these divots have been fun—we’ll never forget the time she effused, for like 10 minutes of actual broadcast television, about her love of removing stains during the first week of The Drew Barrymore Show—while others, like the heavy criticism she faced for expressing an intent to return to the air without her writers during last year’s strikes, not so much.

Now, though, Barrymore is set to take her off-kilter TV stardom to the next level, with Deadline reporting today that she’s set to be installed as the center square in a new installment of unkillable game show premise Hollywood Squares. Occupying territory previously held by Whoopi Goldberg, Joan Rivers, Paul Lynde, and Martin Mull, Barrymore will deliver what we can only assume will be charmingly awkward quips from the strategically important cube, as a game of trivia-based tic-tac-toe plays out around her.

Hollywood Squares last aired new episodes back in 2004, ending a run that started in 1998 with Tom Bergeron as host, and which produced, along the way, one of the greatest game show clips of all time. (If you’re not delivering a Gilbert Gottfried “You FOOL!” to people in your life on a fairly regular basis, we don’t really know what you’re doing with your life.) The new series is being revived at CBS, and will apparently return to the airwaves in January. Nobody besides Barrymore has been announced yet, including any potential host.

 
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