I have a tough exterior,” the Scream actor Melissa Barrera tells me. “You’d never know when I’m panicking.” Does she think of it as a superpower, I ask. “It’s more like a fatal flaw,” she sighs. “Like, am I a sociopath? Because I should be dying right now. Especially after this last year for me, how am I even alive?”
To her credit, Barrera brings up the elephant in the room before I do. There was a point in time when this sort of caveat wasn’t necessary: all Barrera used to be known for was her acting. The 34-year-old was a star in her native Mexico, and over the past four years had worked her way up to leading lady status in the US. She had a big-budget musical under her belt (the film adaptation of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s In the Heights), a Paul Mescal romantic drama (the experimental dance movie Carmen), and her own franchise: in the rebooted Scream films, where she played the traumatised daughter of a serial killer, heir apparent to the series’ original lead Neve Campbell.
Then, 12 months ago, Barrera became better known as a staunch advocate for Palestine, regularly criticising Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his regime’s response to the atrocities perpetrated by Hamas on 7 October. And it transformed her, practically overnight, into a cultural lightning rod.
“Gaza is currently being treated like a concentration camp,” she wrote in an Instagram story in October 2023. “This is genocide and ethnic cleansing.” In another post, she complained of her difficulty finding news stories on Palestinian suffering. “Western media only shows the other side,” she wrote. “Why they do that, I will let you deduce for yourself. We don’t need more hate. No Islamophobia. No antisemitism.”
Spyglass, the studio behind the latest Scream films, immediately dropped Barrera from the franchise, curtailing plans for a third instalment featuring her character. “We have zero 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,” the company said in a statement.
Barrera, in turn, released her own statement, writing: “First and foremost I condemn antisemitism and Islamophobia. I condemn hate and prejudice of any kind against any group of people … I believe a group of people are NOT their leadership, and that no governing body should be above criticism. I pray day and night for no more deaths, for no more violence, and for peaceful co-existence. I will continue to speak out for those that need it most and continue to advocate for peace and safety, for human rights and freedom. Silence is not an option for me.”
If Scream fans want to go watch the next Scream? Cool. If they don’t? Also cool. You just gotta act according to how you preach
Today, Barrera is curled up in the bed of a hotel room in Mexico City, where she is due to attend a fashion show. She has an enviably poreless face and brown eyes framed by thick brows. And while she is sanguine and quick-witted, she is also open about how difficult things have been. “It was the darkest and hardest year of my life, and I had to reevaluate everything,” she says. “There were times where I felt like my life was over.” After being dropped from Scream, work more or less evaporated. “It was quiet for, like, 10 months. I was still getting offers for small things here and there – I’m not going to lie and say there was nothing – but [the message] was, like, ‘Oh, she probably doesn’t have work, she’ll say yes to anything’.” She laughs half-heartedly. In lieu of acting, then, she’s spent much of 2024 promoting the films she made right before everything went haywire – first the horror comedy Abigail in April, and now Your Monster, a big tonal swing of a movie in which she romances a man-beast who lives in her closet.
Barrera plays Laura, a struggling actor in New York, whose playwright boyfriend dumps her on the heels of a cancer scare. She finds solace with “Monster”, as he is only ever called, an unusually affable creature played by Tommy Dewey, who adores Fred Astaire and old romantic comedies, and claims to have known Laura since her childhood. They sing together – Your Monster is a musical, too, by the way – and fall in love, all the while plotting to exact revenge on Laura’s ex. Barrera shines in the film, all frayed nerves and cute-as-a-button romcom pixieness. Think Meg Ryan if she could sing really well, and was occasionally splattered in the blood of her enemies.
Your Monster came to Barrera soon after filming Scream VI in 2022. She’d been looking for something different. “I kept getting horror scripts, and I wasn’t getting a lot of the really exciting parts I was auditioning for,” she remembers. “I would get [roles] that I wasn’t excited about, and I’ve never been a person that just wants to work for work’s sake. I give so much of myself to acting that if a part of me feels like it’s not worth it, I’m gonna be miserable.”
This film, then, with its humour, musical numbers and elaborate genre-hopping, was irresistible. But it also scared her. “Laura wears her heart on her sleeve. She’s a big crier and she’s very dramatic. I’m not like that at all.” It’s that tough exterior thing. And while Barrera had done comedy on stage before – notably in a run of Young Frankenstein in Mexico – she worried she was rusty. Barrera is generally a bit of a worrier, though. “Inside I’m constantly freaking out,” she says. “I rethink my career at least twice a year. Like, should I even be doing this? Am I even good? Am I ever gonna work again?”
Still, she never expected her internal anxieties to bleed so tangibly into reality. “Acting is my passion – I didn’t want it to just end,” she says. Part of her is now grateful for everything that’s happened. “For the longest time, I gave myself value as a human because of my work. So when I saw it potentially ending, I was like, who even am I? And I realised that I’m so much more than just an actor – I’m a great sister, a great daughter, a great friend. And I’m very capable of finding success in something else if I wanted it.”
I’m curious, in light of how public and abrupt her exit was, where the Scream movies sit for her at this point. “They gave me a lot in my career,” she says, brightly. “I made really good friends. I have such loyal fans from those movies that are now watching the rest of the stuff that I do.” But she admits that there are drawbacks. At fan conventions, for instance, parades of Scream devotees are prone to sympathetically allude to the controversy between autograph signings, or asking how she’s doing. “Or they’re like, ‘What they did to you is so messed up, I’m so sorry that happened!’. And it’s something, I think, that’s never going to end. Because the franchise is never going to end. So while I still have so much love for [those movies], the reminders of that very sour moment make it a little bit weird.”
Folding into the weirdness is the new rupture in Scream fandom that her exit has caused. When, right after Barrera’s dismissal, Neve Campbell agreed to return for the forthcoming Scream VII – having turned down Scream VI over a salary dispute – factions were formed. Some, out of respect for Barrera, pledged to boycott subsequent instalments in the franchise. Others, out of loyalty to the series’ original heroine, pledged full allegiance to Campbell. Asked if she has thoughts on the divide, Barrera shrugs.
“I think there have always been Scream factions,” she laughs – before referencing backlashes to past Screams she was in and past Screams that she wasn’t. “There are always going to be people that love you and people that hate you, and people that are open to a story continuing, and people that think that continuing it is ruining it. If they want to go watch the next one? Cool. If they don’t? Also cool.”
“You just gotta act according to how you preach,” she continues. “And that depends on what you value, what your morals are, and whether you can separate that from art or not. There are people who can’t listen to R Kelly anymore, or Michael Jackson, or can’t watch Woody Allen films anymore. And then there are people who don’t care.”
When it comes to her own future, she feels hopeful. After nearly a year of silence, good offers of work started pouring in two months ago. “It felt like I had been invisible, and then all of a sudden, there was a switch that made me visible again,” she says. She is currently filming an espionage series for the US streaming platform Peacock alongside Simu Liu of Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings. “It was exactly what I needed to ease myself back into the industry and do something fun that’s not going to destroy me emotionally,” Barrera laughs. “And, most importantly, I’m finding the right people to work with.”
She hugs her pillow, smiling.
“I feel better. I was stuck in the sand dunes for a while, and now I feel like my feet are moving, I have an oxygen tank, and I’m, like… going up.”
‘Your Monster’ is in UK and Ireland cinemas from 29 November via Vertigo Releasing
