{"id":850341,"date":"2026-09-16T23:54:11","date_gmt":"2026-09-16T23:54:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/850341\/"},"modified":"2026-09-16T23:54:11","modified_gmt":"2026-09-16T23:54:11","slug":"matthew-lillard-regrets-acting-in-scream-7-after-melissa-barrera-fired","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/850341\/","title":{"rendered":"Matthew Lillard Regrets Acting in Scream 7 After Melissa Barrera Fired"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tMatthew Lillard<\/a> feels \u201cashamed\u201d for starring in this year\u2019s \u201cScream 7\u201d after Melissa Barrera<\/a> was fired from the franchise due to social media posts criticizing Israel amid the war in Gaza. Lillard starred in Wes Craven\u2019s original \u201cScream\u201d in 1996 as Stu Macher. He reprised the role in \u201cScream 7,\u201d which opened in theaters in February and became the highest-grossing entry in the series with $214 million.<\/p>\n

\n\tAttending a recent 30th anniversary screening of the original \u201cScream,\u201d Lillard was asked by a fan about the difficulty of speaking out on politics as an actor. Lillard made headlines <\/a>last year for saying \u201cfuck ICE\u201d at a \u201cScream\u201d screening.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI don\u2019t know how else to do it,\u201d Lillard told the fan (via Entertainment Weekly<\/a>). \u201cFor me, I have queer kids. If I\u2019m not standing up for queer kids or kids in the trans community, then what the fuck am I doing? If I\u2019m not standing up against ICE, then what the fuck am I doing?\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tLillard noted that \u201cI don\u2019t think it\u2019s easy all the time\u201d to speak out, noting what happened to Barrera as an example. \u201cScream\u201d franchise producer Spyglass fired her after she starred in two franchise installments and was gearing up to return for \u201cScream 7.\u201d The company said it had \u201czero tolerance for antisemitism or the incitement of hate in any form, including false references to genocide, ethnic cleansing, Holocaust distortion or anything that flagrantly crosses the line into hate speech.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cMelissa Barrera, who\u2019s a beautiful actor, was fired for what she said after the whole Palestinian \u2014 what started happening in Israel,\u201d Lillard said. \u201cIt\u2019s really fucking bullshit and really hard, and she\u2019s on the right side of history. When they start coming after your job, sometimes things are worth it\u2026 When that happened to Melissa, the whole world didn\u2019t pipe up. But she was a year early on what the fuck\u2019s going on. But the whole world should have popped up and said, \u2018She\u2019s right.\u2019 And they didn\u2019t. And that\u2019s brutal.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI went back to do \u2018Scream,\u2019 and I got called out. And I\u2019m like, \u2018Oh, fuck. That\u2019s brutal,\u2019\u201d he continued. \u201cI feel bad about that. I feel ashamed about that. Because in that moment I was so excited to go back, I didn\u2019t really think about Melissa and that journey. I didn\u2019t say no. I\u2019m embarrassed; that\u2019s the truth\u2026 I blew that. I\u2019m on the wrong side of history for that. I still like being in the movie [but] it may not have been the best idea.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAfter war broke out in Gaza in 2023, Barrera took to Instagram to share her views on the conflict. She was critical of Israel and accused the nation of \u201cgenocide and ethnic cleansing.\u201d The post led to her firing, which in turn sparked backlash from her supporters against the release of \u201cScream 7\u201d. Protesters gathered outside of the \u201cScream 7<\/a>\u201d premiere in Los Angeles, for instance, and called for a boycott of the horror film in a show of support for Palestine.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Matthew Lillard feels \u201cashamed\u201d for starring in this year\u2019s \u201cScream 7\u201d after Melissa Barrera was fired from the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":850342,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[236,88,97212,65893,50916],"class_list":["post-850341","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment","tag-matthew-lillard","tag-melissa-barrera","tag-scream-7"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/850341","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=850341"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/850341\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/850342"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=850341"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=850341"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=850341"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}