Melissa Barrera Hasn’t Spoken with Neve Campbell Since ‘Scream’ Firing: “Everyone Makes Their Choices”
Melissa Barrera hasn’t spoken to Neve Campbell since the Scream actor announced she was returning to the franchise, shortly after Barrera was fired. But, as Barrera told Decider in a recent interview, she “fully respects” Campbell’s decision.
“We haven’t really spoken,” Barrera said, when asked if she’s been in touch with Campbell. “I think everyone makes their choices, and what they think is best for them. I fully respect what people think that they need to do, to keep going in this life.”
Barrera, who starred in 2022’s Scream and its 2023 sequel, Scream 6, was fired from the franchise in November 2023, after the Mexican actress criticized Israel’s attack on the Gaza Strip, in the wake of the Hamas-led October 7 attack.
“Gaza is currently being treated like a concentration camp,” she wrote on her Instagram Story. “Cornering everyone together, with nowhere to go, no electricity no water. […] People have learnt nothing from our histories. And just like our histories, people are still silently watching it all happen. THIS IS GENOCIDE & ETHNIC CLEANSING.”
She was one of the few celebrities that voiced support for Palestine at the time, and she was swiftly punished for doing so. Spyglass Media, the production company behind the franchise, dropped Barrera from her role in the upcoming Scream 7 movie, and issued a statement accusing her of “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.”
Jenna Ortega, who played Barrera’s on-screen sister, also exited the horror franchise. A few months later, Campbell—who did not appear in Scream 6, after a pay dispute with Paramount—announced she would return to the franchise in Scream 7, along with original Scream director Kevin Williamson. No doubt Paramount is hoping that the return of Sidney Prescott will be enough to distract fans from the controversial decision to fire Barrera.
Barrera told Decider that in the near-year since this incident—during which many politicians and celebrities have echoed similar criticisms and calls for ceasefires, as the civilian death toll in Gaza continues to mount—she has heard “nothing” from the people who made the decision to fire her. In the meantime, Barrera has kept busy with other roles, including Abigail, a vampire comedy released by Universal earlier this year, and Your Monster, a critically-acclaimed indie horror-comedy that’s now in theaters, in which Barrera falls in love with the monster in her closet.
In April, Barrera told The Los Angeles Times that she doesn’t regret speaking out.
“It wasn’t easy to be labeled as something so horrible [as antisemitism] when I knew that wasn’t the case,” she said. “But I was always at peace, because I knew I had done nothing wrong. I was aligned with human rights organizations globally, and so many experts and scholars and historians and, most importantly, Indigenous peoples around the world. I find that the Indigenous communities around the world are always on the right side of history, point-blank, period.”
