Matthew Lillard on ‘Scream 7’: “I’m on the Wrong Side of History”
Lillard says he took the job without weighing what had just happened to Melissa Barrera, fired from the same film in 2023.
- Matthew Lillard said he is “embarrassed” that he took the Scream 7 job after Melissa Barrera was fired from the same film.
- “I blew that. I’m on the wrong side of history for that,” he said at a Sept. 15 Q&A for the franchise’s 30th anniversary.
- Barrera was dropped in November 2023 over social media posts about Gaza; the studio called her rhetoric hate speech, which she rejected.
Matthew Lillard said he regrets taking the role that brought him back to the Scream franchise after nearly three decades, because he took it in a film Melissa Barrera had just been fired from.
“I feel bad about that. I feel ashamed about that,” Lillard said at a Sept. 15 fan Q&A marking 30 years of the first Scream. “Because in that moment I was so excited to go back, I didn’t really think about Melissa and that journey. I didn’t say no.”
What did Matthew Lillard say?
Lillard was answering a fan who asked how hard it is for an actor to speak out on politics. He said the job offer arrived and he took it without weighing what had just happened on the same production.
“I went back to do Scream, and I got called out. And I’m like, ‘Oh, f—. That’s brutal,'” he said. “I’m embarrassed, that’s the truth. I blew that. I’m on the wrong side of history for that.”
He also said the reaction to Barrera’s firing should have been louder than it was: “When that happened to Melissa, the whole world didn’t pipe up. The whole world should have popped up and said, ‘She’s right.'”
Why was Melissa Barrera fired from ‘Scream 7’?
Barrera played Sam Carpenter, the lead of the two previous films. In November 2023 she posted on Instagram about the war in Gaza, including material describing Israel’s campaign as genocide and ethnic cleansing.
Spyglass Media Group, which controls the franchise, dropped her days later. “We have zero tolerance for antisemitism or the incitement of hate in any form,” the company said, listing “false references to genocide, ethnic cleansing, Holocaust distortion or anything that flagrantly crosses the line into hate speech.”
Barrera rejected that reading. “I believe a group of people are not their leadership and that no governing body should be above criticism,” she said at the time. “Silence is not an option for me.” Co-star Jenna Ortega left the production the same month, and director Christopher Landon exited soon after.
How does a studio fire an actor mid-franchise?
The lever is almost always the morals clause — standard language in a studio contract that lets the company terminate if the performer does something it judges likely to bring public disrepute onto the film.
The clause is written broadly and on purpose. It usually does not require a crime, a conviction or even a finding of fact; the studio’s own reasonable judgment is the trigger, which is why these exits arrive as a statement rather than a hearing.
What it costs depends on where production stands. Fire before shooting and the studio writes off a fee and recasts; fire after, and the footage has to be reshot. Barrera was dropped before cameras rolled, and the part was written out rather than recast.
Is Matthew Lillard in ‘Scream 7’?
Yes. Lillard played Stu Macher, one of the two killers in the 1996 original, and returned to the role in Scream 7 — the reason his casting was treated as an event in the first place. Neve Campbell also came back after sitting out the previous film, with Kevin Williamson, who wrote the original, directing.
It worked commercially. Released Feb. 27, the film opened to $64.1 million, the best in franchise history, and took about $214 million worldwide against a $45 million budget — the biggest Scream ever.
More on him is on Matthew Lillard’s page and on Melissa Barrera’s page. The latest is in our Movies & TV section.
The take
Lillard is not relitigating the firing. He is saying he saw it, wanted the job and took it anyway, and that the silence around Barrera should have been loud. That is a rare thing to say about a film that just became the most profitable in its series.
— Bruno Monteiro
Sources: Matthew Lillard’s remarks at the Sept. 15 anniversary Q&A, as reported by Variety and The Hollywood Reporter; Deadline; Spyglass Media Group’s November 2023 statement and Melissa Barrera’s response, both issued at the time. Box office figures: studio reporting. Photos: frames from the official Scream 7 behind-the-scenes featurette, Paramount Pictures.
Reported from Paramount Movies on Youtube.
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