Drew Barrymore is the latest movie star headed to TV in the new Netflix series Santa Clarita Diet, which premieres on Feb. 3. The actor stars opposite Timothy Olyphant in the comedy that has debuts its marketing campaign during the Golden Globe Awards on Sunday night. So is there an actual Santa Clarita Diet and what could it be? According to USA Today, Barrymore tells the publication that in the Santa Clarita Diet, her character Sheila is a zombie. Knowing that, I would hope that the diet isn't a real one, other than being the things that zombies traditionally eat in fictional tales, such as brains, human flesh, and freshly killed meat, according to The Daily Meal.
Santa Clarita is located about a half-hour drive from Los Angeles in Southern California — and it sounds like the Santa Clarita Diet name takes inspiration from many that do currently exist, like the South Beach Diet or the Mayo Clinic Diet. But while Sheila is a zombie, Barrymore told USA Today that her character takes on this monumental life change in a grounded way. "What if she finds herself, and we do this sort of Cro-Magnon type of evolution with her over the course of the 10 episodes," she said. "No gimmicks, no prosthetics, just an awakening."
So what's on the Santa Clarita Diet's version of the zombie diet (and awakening)? Santa Clarita Diet (the TV show) doesn't sound like a typical comedy, so maybe the Santa Clarita Diet (the diet) doesn't have your run-of-the-mill zombie menu. According to USA Today, Sheila will develop a hunger for the undead, starting with craving raw meat and then eventually wanting human flesh.
And several Netflix promotional photos do offer some clues to additional parts of the zombie diet. The photo below shows Barrymore's character with raw meat, as described in USA Today.
And then there's this photo of Olyphant with a shovel, which means he's either digging up bodies, defending himself from a zombie attack, or doing some yard work, because maybe this diet could require fresh-from-the-garden veggies. (Hey, there could be a plant-based zombie diet out there, especially in Southern California.)
Finally, the photo below shows Olyphant's character looking super shocked at Sheila, so she may have gotten very zombie-like, she wants to eat his brains, or she was sleepwalking and he's waking her up, because the Santa Clarita Diet could also require lots of sleep.
Either way, Barrymore recently told Vanity Fair that she had a blast filming the new series with Olyphant. "It was really, really fun for me. It was very positive, because I got to do fun stuff in it that felt very on par with where my personal life was at," she told the magazine. "I think I've been so distracted with my kids [Olive and Frankie] that any work makes me feel like it's taking me away from them. And this felt like something to dive into, which was really fun for me."
With or without brains on the menu, Santa Clarita Diet sounds like a series that could leave viewers hungry for more episodes.
