Drew Carey Gets Candid on Price Is Right, Learning to Laugh Again and More
Drew Carey has a joke he likes to tell studio audiences at The Price Is Right. “I’m just a regular guy from Cleveland,” he’ll deadpan. “My girlfriend ties me to the bed one leg at a time, just like everyone else.”
There’s a grain of truth in there: Carey, 66, is from Cleveland. But with a career trajectory that’s made him officially beloved — not to mention legendary on the internet for his deep-pocketed tipping habits! — he’s far from a regular guy. Since 1991, when the unknown stand-up debuted on The Tonight Show and a wowed Johnny Carson invited him to the couch for a chat, Carey has been a comic sensation. He masterminded a highly original TV series, The Drew Carey Show. Then, in 2007, when he inherited the so-called “skinny microphone” from The Price Is Right’s iconic host, Bob Barker, Carey again hit the jackpot, managing to maintain stellar ratings for the classic game show (CBS, weekdays, 11 a.m.) without alienating loyalists.
Offstage, however, things have been less linear. Like many comedians, Carey is well acquainted with darkness. His father died when he was 8, and in his teens and 20s, he twice attempted suicide with sleeping pills. In 2020, Carey was shattered when his former fiancée, Amie Harwick, a therapist, was murdered by an ex-boyfriend.
Recently, the often-bespectacled funnyman talks to Us Weekly about triumphing over tragedy, the satisfaction of playing games for work and why he signs off The Price Is Right by saying, “I love you.”
Congratulations on the milestones you’re about to celebrate: the 30th anniversary of your brainchild The Drew Carey Show as well as the 10,000th episode of The Price Is Right, which airs February 26. Do you take time to reflect on markers like these?
Oh, yeah — birthdays and New Year’s, things like that. It’s wild, isn’t it? Sometimes I have to pinch myself: Wow, what a life! Not, “Look at all this stuff I got.” I am really grateful, but that’s not my main focus. Mostly I ask myself, “Am I still growing? Am I still engaged in the world in the way I want to be?”
When you first took over from Bob Barker, how long did you imagine this gig would last?
I had no idea. I mainly didn’t want to get the show canceled or be responsible for ruining such an institution. Once I got comfortable after a couple of years, it felt like it was more my show instead of me just being a steward of somebody else’s. And now I just want to do it forever, as long as I’m mentally and physically able to show up. It’s such a fun thing! The money’s nice, but it’s just a cool job. I don’t have to go to work, I get to go to work! It’s a privilege to be here, an honor. So we’ll see how long I hold up.
Well, as of the anniversary, you’ll already have 3,269 episodes under your belt! Will you be buried with the skinny mic?
Maybe. [Laughs.] I haven’t made that part of my will yet, but we’ll see.
Drew Carey has seen it all during his tenure hosting The Price Is Right, including encounters with contestants who’ve shown up drunk or high. “Oh, that happens here all the time. They’ll have a gummy or I’ll smell alcohol on their breath,” Carey, 66, told TV Insider in an interview published on Monday, June 24. […]
We want to keep you around as long as possible. What about hosting this show makes it so joyous?
I’m playing games all day! There are more than 70 different contests on the show, so I’m never bored. It’s like game night at home: What are we going to play tonight? Is it going to be Scrabble or Monopoly or Cards Against Humanity? I’m also really interested in how people arrive at decisions under pressure. Do they listen to their spouse, to the crowd, to a friend? Or do they go with their gut and ignore everybody else?
You end every episode by saying, “I love you.” Why is that important?
I say it to everybody. I think it should be as common as saying “hello” and “goodbye.” I text my female friends with a heart, I tell ’em I love ’em. And I tell their husbands and kids [the same thing]. There’s nothing wrong with spreading love and saying “I love you” to people. The idea that men especially are told they’re not allowed to express love or they’re not allowed to hug because they’ll appear weak or not masculine enough is ridiculous. It breaks my heart. I think it’s important to tell people you love them. It might be the last time you see them. You don’t know.
You’ve brought your fans a lot of laughter over the years. What shaped your sense of humor growing up? What made you laugh?
Growing up in Cleveland had a big impact because the city was always a punchline. People made fun of it and the whole place had a self-deprecating sense of humor. We all grew up on, “I’m from Cleveland, it’s the mistake on the lake,” and things like that. You learned to make it part of your humor. One of my comedy idols was Big Chuck Schodowski, who recently passed away. He did a late-night TV show called The Hoolihan and Big Chuck Show. Later it was Big Chuck and Lil’ John. On Fridays, the same channel had a guy named Ghoulardi [Ernie Anderson] who became known as the Ghoul and hosted horror films. These guys were all influential for me. When I was a paperboy, some of my first money went to buy Mad magazine. Once I read that, there were two more magazines I’d get, Sick and Cracked. They helped shape my sense of humor.
Have you always been funny? Were you born that way?
My mom was really funny. And I loved poring over the newspaper reading comics. At school, we’d repeat jokes that we’d heard from the morning radio DJ or read in joke books. A friend bought me a famous one, 2000 Insults for All Occasions. I would memorize these and was good at telling them at school. All my friends were the same way. I guess I was funny, but I wasn’t the funniest. I was the youngest in my family and always physically small. Being funny was my way of getting attention and getting people to like me. There’s nothing like getting a laugh. It’s a good dopamine hit, and I’m a dopamine addict. Hardcore.
You’ve been open about your mental health journey and your struggles through the years. Do you remember the first time you felt the symptoms of depression?
It started when I was really young. My dad died when I was 8, and soon after that I began biting my nails. I was a lifelong nail-biter, even as an adult, and it was really bad. When I was in grade school and junior high, I not only bit my nails, I’d bite my cuticles. I’d bite the pads of my fingers and tear the skin off until they bled. It hurt to hold a pencil, and I would always try to hide my hands because I was ashamed of how they looked.
When did you realize there was a larger problem?
I’m not trying to knock Christianity, but I was an evangelical Christian when I was in junior high and high school, and that brought a lot of [negative feelings] into my life. I felt I was never good enough because I was a sinner, and everything was always going to be bad. I did learn good moral lessons about treating people nicely and turning the other cheek that stuck with me. But I had a lot of shame and self-hate. It was so overwhelming, I had to get away from it. At around 18 in college, I started buying self-help books, and those really saved me.
Drew Carey is digging his slimmed-down look. “I’m not taking my shirt off at the pool but, yeah, I lost a few pounds,” Carey, 65, told Entertainment Tonight on Wednesday, February 7, of feeling himself after his dramatic weight loss, noting that finding “proper” suits that fit him has made “all the difference.” Over the […]
What topics did those books cover?
The first one I bought was by Wayne Dyer, and it had a whole chapter about guilt and letting go of it. It really hit me: What am I walking around feeling guilty about everything for? In the hallway at school, instead of saying, “Excuse me,” I would say, “I’m sorry.” The idea of looking someone in the eye was tough for me. I could be talking to you, but I’d be looking at your shoulders or at the wall or the ground. I had this feeling that I didn’t deserve anything: I’m just little Drew Carey from this poor family in Cleveland, this town that everybody makes fun of, and don’t mind me, hope I’m not in your way. Oh, but I’ll tell you a joke to get you to like me. Self-help books helped get me out of it. And then after that, therapy.
You’ve also been very candid about your most painful moments, such as attempting to take your own life at 18 and then again in your 20s. What gave you the strength to keep going?
Well, I didn’t know what I was doing. The first time I tried to kill myself, I was drinking. I had a couple beers, and I took a whole bottle of Sominex, which is not strong enough to kill you. But I’d heard if you wanted to kill yourself, you took sleeping pills. Sominex were the only ones I knew of. I told my fraternity brothers, “Hey, I just took all these pills,” and they took me to the medical center. While I was throwing up over the toilet, my friend Paul was holding my shoulders, and he started singing the jingle: “Take Sominex tonight and sleep… sleep… sleep.” I laughed so hard. It made me feel so much better being able to joke about it.
Humor saves the day! How did you get through depression later on?
I saw a counselor. Everybody needs a therapist, whether you see a professional or not. When you talk to a friend or a bartender or Reddit, you are seeking therapeutic help for a problem. Why not see a pro who has a degree in psychology and understands how the brain works, what neurons do and how habits are formed?
Besides therapy, are there any tools that have helped you along the way?
Yes, learning to meditate. I took a 10-day class through dhamma.org, and it was life-changing. It’s based on Buddhist teachings, but they don’t try to convert you. And it is funded by donations, so you don’t have to pay if you can’t afford it. You just sign up and show up. I was always pretty chill. But this put me on another level.
After going through tough times, how did you learn to laugh again?
Humor is my way out of everything. And I have no objection to people using dark humor, [like] when my friend Paul started singing [about] Sominex. He knew me well enough to know he could be playful with me and not hurt me. And it was kind of perfect. I’ll never forget it as long as I live. I’ve always used my sense of humor to get me over this kind of stuff. Still, sometimes I need to have serious time and ponder life instead of laughing with everyone. I need balance.
Any triggers you avoid?
I’m very careful. I watch my mental health all the time. And when it’s time to stay off social media, I stay off social media at night. I read the newspaper every day. I do the Jumble and I look at the headlines. [Sometimes] I go, nope, not today.
It’s been almost five years since you lost your former fiancée, Amie Harwick. You’ve said that you feel that Amie is with you always.
All the time. I think about her every day. It’s such a loss. Her death still affects me and my ideas about relationships and intimacy. It was all damaged by first our breakup, and then, the day before she died, when she texted me. It had been a really bad breakup for both of us, but a necessary one. I couldn’t think about her or see a picture of her. I didn’t want to be reminded. And then I got a text from her out of the blue. She said, “Hey, it’s Amie. I’ve been thinking a lot about forgiveness. I would love to get together with you and talk about some things.” I texted her that I loved her and that I’d see her the next week. I heard from one of her friends that she shed tears about my saying that I loved her still. Which I did. I loved her madly even though we were broken up.
So you never got a chance to have that final closure with her?
The next day she was murdered, and we never got a chance to get together. It destroyed me for a while. I still don’t date. I have women I go out with and spend time with, but it’s all platonic, and I don’t care about anything else. Amie’s death really affected everything.
You’ve mentioned that you can finally move on now. Was there a specific moment when you felt that?
After Amie died and we had the funeral, her three best friends reached out, saying, “We wanted to tell you how much Amie loved you and cared for you and how well she spoke of you.” I was so moved by it. They’ve now become some of my best friends. I also got to reconnect with her mother, father and brother. We held each other up through the funeral and the trial [of Harwick’s ex-boyfriend Gareth Pursehouse, who was convicted of killing her by strangulation and throwing her from the third-floor balcony of her home]. Now Amie’s memory and the things she lived for keep us going.
We already know the price is right in your life. But what else is right?
Honestly, I have this great female friend group that I cherish, and I’m godfather to several sets of kids from the group. We hang out together, went on vacation together and we talk to each other every day. That’s the biggest blessing in my life right now.
For more on Carey, watch the exclusive video above and pick up the latest issue of Us Weekly – on newsstands now.
