“Scream 7” reunites a lot of the original players from the 1996 film that started it all, but it’s impossible to acknowledge the latest sequel without addressing the very public exits of Melissa Barrera and Jenna Ortega after the prior two entries.
Director Kevin Williamson and star Mason Gooding did just that at the horror movie’s premiere in Hollywood on Wednesday as Free Palestine protestors picketed the Paramount lot outside.
“That was a great loss. With five and six, I was the plus-one, so all I know is that when Melissa went away, I didn’t hear anything from anyone,” Williamson told TheWrap on the soundstage red carpet. “And then one day, I got a call from the producer and he said, ‘What about Neve Campbell and we’d go back to Sidney Prescott?’ And my mind went, ‘Oh, my God, I would love that, if she would do it. How are we going to get her?’ So it all worked out.”
“When I found out that she was negotiating for the role and we started writing the new script, they let me participate,” he continued. “Neve called me, and I didn’t know what she wanted. Maybe she read the script and she has issues? She was calling me to ask me to direct.”
While Williamson has been in the “Scream” universe since writing the original screenplay — as well as “Scream 2,” “Scream 4” and now “Scream 7” — Gooding joined the franchise in Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett’s “Scream” (2022) with Barrera and Ortega. They went on to form the Core 4 to fans along with Jasmin Savoy Brown in “Scream VI.”
“When it comes to doing something as meaningful as ‘Scream’ is to me without the factors that made it so loving in the first place, in tandem with any personal qualms I had with not being able to do something I love with the people that mean so much to me,” Gooding explained, “It felt like a version of grief that I think was most about making sure, on a personal and creative level, that the people that do mean as much to me as they do know that they mean that.”
“And then beyond that, it’s about supporting in the way that you can. I feel like they’re not necessarily hurting for support or for creative capabilities — I’m watching ‘Wednesday,’ I’m watching ‘Copenhagen’ — and I feel like the two of them are as masterful and captivating as performers as they are,” he added. “I feel like the two of them are masterful and captivating as performers, so it’s not necessarily something that I feel I’d be paying tribute to by trying to talk about how it makes me feel. That being said, being able to keep them personally as close as they are, or at least they have been, is the most meaningful thing to me.”
Entertainment Labor for Palestine, CODEPINK LA and Jewish Voice for Peace-Los Angeles organized the premiere protest on Wednesday more than two years after Barerra was fired from the horror series by Spyglass Media Group for pro-Palestine social media posts that the producers said “flagrantly crosses the line into hate speech.” Co-star Ortega then exited in solidarity, with initial director Christopher Landon also departing and corroborating media reports.
“We live in America, everyone has a right to protest and everyone has a right to be heard. My heart is with with their truth,” Williamson said. “It’s hard to comment on something like that here, because it’s such a nuanced conversation, that to do it with a microphone and do it in sound bites, it’s never going to sound like a great answer. But we do live in a country where we protest when something happens that we don’t like, and I support that.”
Gooding, Brown and Williamson were joined on the red carpet by Neve Campbell, Courteney Cox, Anna Camp, Mckenna Grace, Jimmy Tatro, Celeste O’Connor, Isabel May, Sam Rechner, Tim Simons, Joel McHale and Ethan Embry, as well as Ghostface voice Roger L. Jackson, Skeet Ulrich, David Arquette, Matthew Lillard and Scott Foley.
“Scream 7” opens in theaters on Friday.
