Skeet Ulrich will not complete the three-film return he says producers once mapped out for him in the “Scream” franchise, and he blames the removal of co-star Melissa Barrera.
“Without Melissa Barrera and Sam Loomis, there’s no Billy Loomis,” Ulrich told Us Weekly. He said his character, the original film’s killer, exists in the newer movies as a presence inside the mind of Barrera’s Sam Carpenter, his on-screen daughter. Producers, he said, “didn’t quite get to complete” the arc they had described to him.
Ulrich played Billy Loomis in the 1996 original and reprised the role through hallucinated appearances in 2022’s “Scream” and 2023’s “Scream VI.” Neither he nor Barrera appears in this year’s “Scream 7.”
Spyglass Media Group dropped Barrera in November 2023 over social media posts criticizing Israel’s actions in Gaza. The company said at the time it had “zero tolerance for antisemitism or the incitement of hate in any form.” Barrera condemned antisemitism in response while defending her right to use her platform to raise awareness of issues she cares about. Jenna Ortega, who played her sister, later declined to return for the seventh film.
Ulrich went further than saying he would sit out. He told the magazine he had been excited to return and failed to think about Barrera’s situation, and he described himself as embarrassed and on the wrong side of history for it. He called her removal “really hard” and said she stands on the right side of history.
His remarks arrive weeks after Matthew Lillard, who played Stu Macher in the original and returned for “Scream 7,” said he felt ashamed of taking part. That film also featured Neve Campbell, Courteney Cox, Isabel May, Jasmin Savoy Brown and Mason Gooding.
Barrera has said she would come back only on one condition. “Not with the company that currently holds the rights,” she said on a JustWatch interview. She added that an apology would not change her mind, and she accused Spyglass leadership of branding her as something she is not and never apologizing.
Spyglass has not publicly revised its position since the firing.
The franchise now faces a gap in its mythology. The newer films built a bloodline between Billy and Sam, and the two actors who carried it have both left.
