The main actress of “Scream”, Melissa Barrera, was fired from the saga following her positions in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Bad news for Scream fans! Melissa Barrera, the star of the latest films, has just been fired by Spyglass following “controversial comments” regarding the Israeli-Palestinian crisis.
Following the Hamas terrorist attacks of October 7 and the Israeli attacks on Gaza that followed, the interpreter of Sam Carpenter, the daughter of the killer Billy Loomis in the first film (Skeet Ulrich), published several messages regarding the conflict and gave support to Palestine.
In an Instagram story taken up by the New York PostMelissa Barrera declared:
“Gaza is currently treated like a concentration camp. Everyone is stuck, there is no place to go, no electricity, no water… People have learned nothing from our history. And just like our stories, people continue to silently watch what happens. THIS IS A GENOCIDE AND ETHNIC CLEANSE“.
The Mexican actress then wrote in her story: “I too come from a colonized country. Palestine will be liberated.” Later, she regretted that social networks and the media censored articles and posts favorable to Palestine.
“Western media only shows part. Why do they do this? I will let you guess. Palestinians know that the world has been trying to make them invisible for decades.”
Paramount Melissa Barrera in Scream VI
The production company Spyglass Media then decided to fire the actress from the seventh film in the horror franchise. Spyglass spokesperson told Variety :
“Spyglass’s position is unequivocal: we have no tolerance for anti-Semitism or incitement to hatred in any form, including false references to genocide, ethnic cleansing, misrepresentation of Holocaust or anything else that blatantly crosses the line into hate speech.”
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For his part, the director of Scream 7, Christopher Landon, who took over directing after the departure of Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett, posted a message on X (ex-Twitter) before deleting it (but captured by the website Deadline) in which he wrote: “Everything sucks. Stop shouting. It wasn’t up to me to make that decision.”.
In reaction, Melissa Barrera published the following message in an Instagram story: “Ultimately, I’d rather be excluded for the people I include than be included for the people I exclude.”
The 33-year-old young actress made herself known in the series Vida before being propelled to the forefront thanks to the musical comedy In the Heights and in Scream 5 and VI in which she plays Sam Carpenter, the sister of Jenna Ortega.
The cast of Scream 7 had not yet been announced but Melissa Barrera and Jenna Ortega were expected to reprise their roles. We still do not know, at the time of writing, whether the interpreter of Wednesday Addams will be back in Scream VII.
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