Drew Barrymore reacts to 'Music and Lyrics' costar Hugh Grant calling her singing 'just horrendous' by serenading him
- Hugh Grant said that Drew Barrymore needed more auto-tuning than him on "Music and Lyrics."
- "I don't think she'd mind me saying her singing is just horrendous," he told Wired.
Hugh Grant has said that his "Music and Lyrics" costar Drew Barrymore's natural singing voice was "just horrendous," which the actor and talk show host then attempted to disprove by sharing a video of her singing to him on Instagram.
In a Wired video interview with his "Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves" costars Chris Pine and Michelle Rodriguez, Grant was asked some of "the web's most-searched questions" about himself, which included a question about whether he actually sang in the 2007 rom-com.
In the film, he played a washed-up 1980s pop star who enlists the woman who waters his plants (Barrymore) to help write a comeback hit. The pair regularly sing together as they try to come up with a song for rising pop star Cora (Haley Bennett), which Grant has admitted didn't sound as good on set as it did to audiences.
"Does Hugh Grant actually sing in 'Music and Lyrics?'" Pine said, reading out the question to which Grant responded: "Yes, well I do, but I'm auto-tuned beyond belief."
"Actually, that's not true, I'm auto-tuned a bit, but not as much as some," he continued. "Drew Barrymore was in that film with me and I don't think she'd mind me saying her singing is just horrendous."
"I've heard dogs bark better than she sings," he added.
"Oh snap!" Rodriguez said as she and Pine laughed at Grant's brutal honesty.
However, the "Paddington 2" actor — who had an excruciatingly awkward Oscars carpet interview with Ashley Graham at the weekend — noted that "once they tuned her up," Barrymore "sounded way better than me because she's got heart and voice and rock 'n' roll whereas I sounded like Julie Andrews and I'm meant to be rock 'n' roll."
Representatives for Barrymore did not immediately respond to a request for comment, but the actor did share a good-natured reaction to Grant's remarks on Instagram.
She shared a video of her singing a few lines of their duet from the film, "Way Back Into Love," which she captioned: "#SingForHughGrant JOIN ME."
After she was done, she addressed her former costar: "Oh Hugh, Bert, Hubert, that's for you."
Grant has previously spoken about starring opposite Barrymore in the film, which came more than a decade after the two struck up a friendship in the wake of Grant's arrest for "lewd conduct" in 1995 when he was caught soliciting a sex worker. After the incident, Barrymore sent him a supportive letter and the two became long-distance friends.
However, speaking on Sirius XM's "The Jess Cagle Show" in 2018, Grant said he believed Barrymore might have changed her opinion of him after they worked together.
"Drew, I think, did hate me a bit. But I admired her," he said. "We just were very different human beings. She was very LA, and I was a grumpy old Londoner."
"But the funny thing is, although it was fractionally tense on the set of that film, I think the chemistry is rather good between us," he continued. "Sometimes tension makes a good crackle."
Meanwhile, Barrymore said on her own CBS talk show that despite Grant having a "grumpy" outer shell, she thinks he's "so wonderful and he's so funny," noting that the actor's "irreverent" humor allows them to go to some "funny, weird places."