Ashley and Anne, owners of The Drewseum, have been web hosting clients of ours for several years, and friends for even longer. Both our professional and personal connections developed from our shared love of actress Drew Barrymore. Recently the ladies decided to launch a podcast detailing their experiences as fans over the years, called How Do You Drew. We caught up with Ashley and Anne to learn more about their new project, as well as their history as “Drewbies.”
When did the two of you first meet?
We met online in 1999 through a Drew Barrymore fan message board. We exchanged phone calls, emails, and snail mail and then finally met in person in 2001. We’ve been super close “IRL” friends ever since.
Can you tell us how you became fans of Drew?
By coincidence, we both became fans of Ms. Barrymore in 1998. She was promoting three movies that year and was constantly featured on tv and in magazines. With all of the exposure to her bright personality and presence, we both became smitten.
You’ve been running The Drewseum, a Drew fan site, for quite a while now. Tell us more about how that came to be.
In 2005, Ashley had been watching a tv show called “The Incurable Collector” and was inspired to find a way for us to showcase our Drew collections. A website seemed like the obvious venue at that time. We’ve since expanded the website to not only share our archives, but also our vast knowledge of Drew related information.
How did your love for Drew expand into the realm of podcasting?
We’ve been casually tossing around the idea of a podcast for quite a few years. We find the conversations we have fairly entertaining and have no shortage of Drew knowledge to share with the world. A podcast felt like the next step in our Drewseum evolution.
Any specific plans for the podcast you can tell us about?
We’re definitely hoping to have some of Drew’s career collaborators on the show as guests once we are a little more established. It would be great to hear new stories from people who have actually worked alongside her over the years.
Like us, you’ve met Drew in person. What’s your most memorable encounter?
We’ve been extremely lucky in getting to encounter Drew many times. One of our most cherished times was when we were invited to her former Flower Films offices to deliver a birthday gift for her. We got to spend personal time with her that we still have to pinch ourselves to believe!
A lot has changed with the Internet and the World Wide Web since 2005. How have you dealt with the constantly changing web landscape?
It’s been wild to see how much things have advanced even just since we started the website. Our ability to collaborate from different locations has become so much easier due to the tools available. Also the ease at releasing a podcast is pretty incredible. We sadly have experienced the loss of our site not once, but twice. Luckily we now feel extremely secure with our host!
Be sure to check out Ashley and Anne’s new podcast How Do You Drew as well as their fan site The Drewseum.
