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Drew Barrymore has described the original ending of 50 First Dates, which was nothing like the happy conclusion viewers eventually got to see.
The actor, 49, appeared opposite Adam Sandler in the popular 2004 romcom, playing Lucy, an art teacher with anterograde amnesia, otherwise known as short-term memory loss – meaning she is unable to retain the memory of her daily experiences.
Sandler, meanwhile, plays Henry, a commitment-phobic marine veterinarian who falls in love with Lucy.
Speaking on her talk show ahead of the film’s 20th anniversary, Barrymore revealed that the script did not originally see Henry and Lucy find happiness as a married couple in Alaska.
“Something that always sticks in my mind is the original ending of 50 First Kisses, as it was called at the time,” Barrymore said.
“It was a drama set in Seattle. The original ending was her saying, ‘You should go and live your life, because this is no life here. And he goes away, as he does, and he comes back and he walks into the restaurant and he just sits down and says, ‘Hi, I’m Henry.’ And the film ends.”
Barrymore’s co-host Ross Matthews remarked: “Honestly, can I just tell you... thank you. Thank you for changing it.”
Peter Segal, the director of 50 First Dates, previously discussed an alternate version of the film that also diverged from the final ending.
Speaking to Entertainment Weekly, Segal revealed that the film would have ended with Lucy waking up and looking at a painted mural, designed to remind her of her new life and family.
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“It was a mural that she painted that, unlike the mural in her father’s garage, which they painted over each day so she had a blank canvas to work on, this one Henry left up so that when she woke up in the morning she could see a pictorial timeline of her last day to reintroduce her,” Segal said.
“So by the time she finished panning with her eyes from left to right, she would come to rest on Henry, and unlike earlier in the movie when she woke up in bed with him and he was a stranger again and she screamed and had a reaction, it was a way of reintroducing her to her life again.”
