I’m a very, very, very big fan of Scream. It’s the saga that hooked me on horror movies, and its constant meta-referencing has fascinated me for decades. The commentary built around the psychopaths and the filmmaking in its first installment, and later the jokes around sequels, trilogies, remakes, reboots, and “elevated horror” has been a fascinating evolution to watch unfold. Until Scream 7 came out, which straight-up became the kind of movie the saga has always parodied. However, Matthew Lillard, who returned to the saga after many, many years, doesn’t regret how bad it is, but something much more serious.
Do you like people getting fired from horror movies?
It all started when, in 2023, Melissa Barrera was abruptly fired from Scream 7 for posting comments on social media in support of Palestine, at the start of the Israeli genocide. The script had to be rewritten from scratch, and, somehow, Kevin Williamson, the new director (and the franchise’s original screenwriter) called Lillard to have him play Stu Macher again, one of the killers from the first Scream. Of course, he accepted without hesitation… and now he regrets it.
“Melissa Barrera, who is a really great actress, was fired for what she said about Palestine, what was happening in Israel. It’s fucking awful and really hard, and she’s on the right side of history. When they start firing you from your jobs, sometimes things deserve it… When it happened to Melissa, nobody took her side. But she knew what was happening. The whole world should’ve jumped up and said ‘She’s right’. And it didn’t. and it’s brutal”. He didn’t either, of course.
Lillard, however, accepted the offer: “I came back to do Scream and people called me out. And I said ‘Oh, fuck, that’s brutal’. I feel awful. I feel ashamed. Because at that moment I was excited to come back and I didn’t think about Melissa and her journey. I didn’t say no. I’m ashamed, that’s the truth… I fucked up. I’m on the wrong side of history because of that. I still like being in the movie, but it may not have been the best idea”. Better late than never, Matthew.
