Why Drew Barrymore Is Stepping Away from MTV Movie & TV Awards 2023 Hosting Gig

In support of the WGA Strike, Drew Barrymore is pulling out of her hosting duties at the 2023 MTV Movie & TV Awards.

In a statement, Drew said, “I have listened to the writers, and in order to truly respect them, I will pivot from hosting the MTV Movie & TV Awards live in solidarity with the strike. Everything we celebrate and honor about movies and television is born out of their creation. And until a solution is reached, I am choosing to wait but I’ll be watching from home and hope you will join me.”

Along with revealing that she’ll host the show next year, Barrymore went on, “I thank MTV, who has truly been some of the best partners I have ever worked with. And I can’t wait to be a part of this next year, when I can truly celebrate everything that MTV has created, which is a show that allows fans to choose who the awards go to and is truly inclusive.​”

According to Variety, this year’s show will still happen on Sunday, but it will not have a host.

Bruce Gillmer, the award show’s executive producer, said, “Drew, without question, she’s been incredible. It’s hard to imagine that we’ve ever had a better experience with a host. She’s more of a partner really, she’s in it every day, just super passionate and super engaged and creative. She even bought some of her own team along for the journey. So when this all reared its head, we started to prepare for what could be. She is not surprisingly, standing in solidarity with the writers, which we have full respect for. She has our full support.”

“So she’s not going to be with us live in the house for the show and we will essentially be going hostless,” he continued. “The silver lining in all of this is that we really formed a partnership almost a family-like atmosphere. So we see this as a shift in direction, but also a pause for the initial plan, which we’ve all agreed and she’s accepted to continue as our host in 2024.”

Gillmer is still waiting to see which presenters, honorees, and nominees will still be part of the show.

Despite what is at hand, Gillmer noted that they still plan on “delivering for the fans.” He teased, “We still have a live performance. We still have the award sequences, although those are the elements that are very unpredictable — because clearly we don’t know which talent will feel comfortable. A lot of them won’t.”

He emphasized, “But we have a plan, since the award show is fan-voted, we want to honor the fans’ participation and also honor the talent that earn these awards. So we’ll be giving the awards away. We’re working on a plan on how to do that without the traditional presentation involved, should the talent or some of the talent not show. We’ve got backups to our backups. And we’re planning on keeping as many of the signature elements of the show intact. We will have a live audience and it will still be a live event. Different, with more pre-taped packages and so forth, which are scalable, but it’ll still have that live event feel.”

“We’re going to be super respectful of the talents’ decisions to either be involved in pre tapes, show up or not show up, whatever they decide,” Gillmer went on. “We’ve got backup plans and coverage just in case, so I guess the short answer is, I’m not sure yet… There’s also athletes and celebrity chefs and all kinds of other talent that are not squarely affected. So we’ll be going down that road. We will be looking for some live talent in the room to help tell the story, but not host segments per se. We also have a very charismatic VO artist with us, so stay tuned. It’s all unfolding in real time.”

Aside from Drew's decision to step away, there will no longer be red carpet interviews before the show.