Matthew Lillard had an awkward encounter with a former fan at the Midsummer Scream horror convention in Long Beach, California, this past weekend.
Lillard was in attendance for the convention’s “Scream” 30th anniversary reunion panel. He was joined by several of his fellow “Scream” stars, including Skeet Ulrich, Jamie Kennedy, Joseph Whipp, as well as stunt actor Lee Waddell and Ghostface voice performer Roger L. Jackson, for the panel celebrating the iconic 1996 slasher movie’s enduring legacy.
However, during a mid-panel fan Q&A that saw Lillard get up and walk around the floor to talk to attendees, a man stood up and spoke into a microphone to address the 56-year-old actor. The anonymous man recalled a years-old interaction with Lillard.
“I met you a few years ago,” he said, before recalling the time he tried to tell Lillard about his theory that there was a “Scream connection” linking the 1996 slasher movie and the 1995 romance movie “Mad Love,” both of which starred Drew Barrymore as characters named Casey. In response, Lillard allegedly asked the man, “What were you smoking?”
“The way you made me feel … when you told me that, you kind of lost me as a fan,” the man told Lillard, adding, “I just wanted you to know that.”
While most of what the fan said afterward were overwhelmed by the crowd’s reaction, he could be heard telling Lillard in video captured of the moment, “I always had a thing for you. Yeah, you lost me as a fan. Thank you.”
“What a great question,” Lillard quipped in response, while the crowd booed the former fan. Although Kennedy tried to get Lillard to clarify the fan’s comments, Lillard responded, “It does not matter. Next question!”
The awkward interaction comes the same year that Lillard made his quasi-return to the “Scream” franchise in “Scream 7.” Lillard appears in several scenes in the film, reprising his role as one of the franchise’s original Ghostface killers, before it is ultimately revealed that one of the other “Scream 7” characters used AI deepfake technology to “resurrect” Stu in video communications with still-standing Final Girl Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell).
