Drew Barrymore Reveals the Original ’50 First Dates’ Ending: There Was No Happily Ever After When the Movie ‘Was a Drama Set in Seattle’

Drew Barrymore and Adam Sandler‘s “50 First Dates” is celebrating its 20th anniversary this year, and the former dropped a surprise revelation on her eponymous daytime talk show by sharing the original ending to the 2004 romantic-comedy classic. The film was not supposed to end in with a definitive happily ever after for main characters Henry (Sandler) and Lucy (Barrymore).

“Something that always sticks in my mind is the original ending of ’50 First Kisses,’ as it was called at the time,” Barrymore said. “Yeah, 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 reacted to the revelation by saying: “Honestly, can I just tell you: thank you. Thank you for changing it.”

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“50 First Dates” centered on the love story between marine veterinarian Henry (Sandler) and art teacher Lucy, who lives with anterograde amnesia. Lucy’s memory resets at the start of every day, so she never remembers falling in love with Henry. The film’s theatrical cut ends with the two very much together as they join their daughter on a boat in Alaska, where Henry is pursuing his work.

Back in 2019, “50 First Dates” director Peter Segal spoke to Entertainment Weekly about another alternate ending for the movie in which Henry makes a grand gesture in order to help with Lucy’s memory of their love story. That version of the movie ended with “Lucy waking up in bed and immediately looking at a mural on the ceiling that tells the story of her accident and life” over the years. 

“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.” 

The director continued, “It seemed like a fitting ending for the couple until they pivoted to focus on Henry realizing his dream of studying walruses in their natural habitat. The idea came up, well, what if Lucy, her father, and their child were all there with him, and that just seemed really exciting and very emotional to me. The hardest thing in movies is come up with a strong beginning and a strong end, and if you have that, you’ve got a shot, and I think to this day, it’s the best ending to any movie that I’ve done.”

Segal directed Sandler at several points in his career, including the films “Anger Management” (2003) and “The Longest Yard” (2005).