In December 1996, scary-movie fans got a Christmas treat. Wes Craven, the director who helped push horror to new thresholds of violence with The Last House on the Left and Nightmare on Elm Street, catalyzed another wave of evolution in the genre with Scream. Years after most audiences had tapped out following the glut of 1980s slashers, he and the young screenwriter Kevin Williamson introduced a fresh irreverence and a cast of hot, charismatic new faces. Those actors gave themselves over to the story so completely that they created a whole coterie of new screen icons — half of which are so enduring they’ve appeared in every entry in the franchise, including nü Scream, now in theaters.
Over the course of four films, Neve Campbell’s Sidney Prescott became the most un-fuck-with-able horror heroine of all time. Gale, the snarky reinvention of the “best friend” trope who helped prove there need not only be one “final girl,” has been played with sublime bitchiness for 25 years by Courteney Cox. And David Arquette turned the “hapless town cop” archetype into a noble hero with Deputy turned Sheriff Dewey Riley. Then there are the original movie’s villains, Billy and Stu, so masterfully embodied by Skeet Ulrich and Matthew Lillard, respectively, that it took just one movie for them to cast a shadow over the rest of this decades-spanning series. The fifth installment revisits Stu’s home, the site of the 1996 film’s final showdown, and Billy reemerges in, well, a way you might not expect. Williamson’s Leopold and Loeb, after all this time, still have their feet on the neck of Woodsboro.
So in the name of the Scream franchise’s return and the pair’s silver anniversary as horror’s favorite (thinly veiled) murder boyfriends, Vulture sat down with Ulrich and Lillard to discuss those halcyon days of filming in Northern California’s lush Napa Valley, drinking in Arquette’s hotel room, and being so intense on set they accidentally freaked out Cox. And to all you “Stu Lives” truthers out there, your king has a message of hope.
I went to a marathon of all the Scream movies last summer, and after watching all of them again on a big screen, I can still say it’s the best horror franchise of all time. The original is a perfect film.
Matthew Lillard: It is not a perfect film!
Okay, why isn’t it a perfect film? Is this interview going to be me defending Scream to you?
M.L.: I think the opening sequence is incredible. It sets the tone for everything else, and the middle of the movie sort of gets bogged down. Then the end sequence, the last 20 minutes, is incredible. You earn so much street cred in those first 20 minutes that the rest of the movie, it sort of tanks! And then it comes screaming up to finish strong.
You mean when you and Skeet get unleashed at the end?
Skeet Ulrich: [Laughs.] Right, exactly.
M.L.: I think what it is in that last sequence is the ability to laugh at the same time that you’re horrified. To be like, “Oh my God, that’s crazy! They’re stabbing each other!” The brutality, the killing of Tatum — and then you’re laughing in the middle of it all. I think it’s an intersection you don’t see very often, and it’s really hard to hit. It’s hard to scare the crap out of people and make them laugh at the same time.
Billy and Stu feel so lived in by the time we get to that climactic moment in Stu’s kitchen where you’ve got Sidney cornered. At that point, we’re wondering what else these guys have done together. How many atrocities don’t we know about? Did you speculate much about their involvement with one another before the events of the movie?
S.U.: It’s probably going to be disappointing to hear my answer because I’m not a backstory kind of actor. I felt like, in this instance in particular, the writing was so good, Kevin sort of laid it all out. So I didn’t really need to embellish. It never really crossed my mind.
M.L.: It did come up. We did talk about it, but I don’t remember answering it. There are no definitive answers for sure, but I think that’s part of the brilliance of Wes Craven in this movie. He’s finding these idiosyncratic moments that the actors are giving and choosing to keep them. So those moments — those weird little mistakes, like getting hit with a phone or improv moments during the stabbing, just over-the-top acting — he and the editors put together all those things to make it feel lived in, maybe more than us talking about a backstory.
What was the dynamic like between all of you? Just a bunch of young actors with no idea they’re making something that will become a classic.
M.L.: You know, I will say that there are very few instances in my career now, 30 years in, that have replicated what we had on that movie. It was before technology, before phones, before Instagram and these social-media platforms. In between takes now, you’re seeing people lined up on phones, but back then, there was nothing other than each other. Because of the hours we worked and the way we worked, we were inseparable. You get off work at six o’clock in the morning and you want your sort of traditional after-work beer, and you’re going to David Arquette’s room to grab a drink. Not only that, but the grips are there, the crew’s there, Wes is there. The entire cast is there, and the idea of being night owls on location adds to this really familia sort of vibe. I think that there was an innocence about it because we were all young. We all had a lot to gain.
Nobody was out trying to make an iconic movie. We were just trying to make the best movie possible, and quite frankly, it was a horror movie at a time when Wes Craven hadn’t made a good horror movie in a long time. So it wasn’t like there were great expectations, but there was the sense that we were all in. Nobody was jaded. Nobody’s protecting themselves or being like, This is lame. Everyone was all in, and I think the power of that is sort of unappreciated and undeniable. It really speaks to the artistry. And I know that sounds really dramatic, but I know when you have a bunch of artists fully committed to making something incredible, great things happen.
S.U.: I agree completely. We did feel like a group of outcasts that came together. You know, 6 a.m. getting off work and we’d be rolling into the hotel half caked in sticky syrup and blood as people are rolling out to go on their wine tours in Napa Valley. We must have looked like the most insane group of people in this hotel complex! I mean, obviously there were relationships. There were children born of those bonds! You can’t undermine that at all, and Matt’s right. It’s not every film that you get to do that — less and less now as we get distracted by so many things. It really was an incredible time. I remember one of the first nights that we were all there — I don’t know if you remember, Matt — we all gathered in that field out in front of the hotel.
M.L.: On the hillside, yeah?
S.U.: On that hillside, on this massive lawn or whatever. I just remember us all for whatever reason convening there for a little bit. I think it was pre-David’s bar being built in his room [laughs]. You could just feel this energy, and I think we were all excited by what everyone was bringing to the film. In a way, what we experienced was this union of souls that sort of brought a backstory, or what you think is a backstory, to the film.
M.L.: I wonder if you remake the original version of Scream — you know how Gus Van Sant did Psycho? I wonder if the movie still works, shot for shot, with a different cast. I keep going back to this idea that there’s something different than just the script that made that movie pop.
S.U.: There’s something very fresh and free and rebellious about all the performances that I don’t know if you get in this day and age. I don’t know what it is.
M.L.: It’s completely losing our minds! I mean, that whole last sequence is us on a 10 and chewing scenery like no one’s business. The idea that Wes Craven sat behind the monitor and was like, This is great. We were crazy! If I ever saw somebody do that on a set, I’d be like, “Dude, bring it down 58 percent.”
S.U.: Maybe even 70!
M.L.: You would just be like, “Fix it! You’re too big! You’re eating the scenery like you’ve never seen a film camera!” But there we were, completely screaming at each other. Like, what are we doing?
So when you’re filming the kitchen scene with Neve and you’re giving the villain monologue and talking about motives, are you just blacking out because you’re so deep into it?
M.L.: I just think we were amped. There’s no doubt that we were on a fever pitch for the five days we shot the last killing sequence. We were screaming. We were in between takes trying to maintain the energy. We’re not going to dinner. We’re sitting there trying to stay in this space that you could get back to.
S.U.: A fever pitch, yeah. I have a memory of when we shot a lot of the kitchen sequence, and it was time for Gale to enter the scene. Courteney came to the set, getting ready to shoot it, and Matt and I are like caged animals, in that zone, and just pacing the set. Courteney comes in, and we make eye contact, and Wes is like, “Okay, all right. All right.” She’s freaked out, and we’re not even filming yet. And I distinctly remember Wes being like, “All right, guys. Just calm down for a second.” She was quite startled by what she walked into!
M.L.: You get interview requests over the years: “Do you want to talk about Scream or do a podcast?” And I’m like, I have nothing else to say! And yet, doing these interviews now and talking with Skeet, having a new perspective when he says things like that, it sparks all these new memories for me. It’s been really lovely, and it’s literally like thinking of your first girlfriend.
S.U.: You’re right. It is.
M.L.: Suddenly you look back and you have nothing but love for that person because you’re like, Oh my God, that was so sweet, so innocent. You were so little! And you have such respect and sort of admiration for that time in your life. Looking back on this has been like looking back on the first love of your life. It’s been really, really endearing, to be honest.
With you guys roaming around the set like feral animals, it sounds like anything was liable to happen in the final showdown with Sidney. When Billy almost starts crying while talking about his mom, was it challenging to find that emotional grounding?
S.U.: We’ve got Neve pinned in the corner of the kitchen, and I’m trying to hit that little heartfelt moment of Billy having lost his mom. Trying to find this hint of rawness and pain and tears. Then Sidney disappears, and we can’t find her, and I run into the living room with the knife and cut the couch open. I had so many damn feathers stuck to all that blood around the knife. We do the first take and all I can hear is Wes laughing. I’m like, What? So I look down, and it looks like I have a duck on my hand. We were like, “How are we going to do this?”
M.L.: I’m thinking about that scene now. I sort of love this notion that he’s slowly dying throughout, that you’ve got this moment where he’s, like, on a 10, and he’s being stabbed. Then all of a sudden he’s got the line, “I think I’m dying here, man.” And he is dying!
S.U.: So it wasn’t the TV!
M.L.: Shhh! He doesn’t bleed out! Nobody bleeds out in real life, Skeet. Somebody would’ve come along and cauterized the wound.
Matthew, do you have anything to say to the Stu truthers who say he survived?
M.L.: Yeah. I’m the grandfather of Stu truthers.
You’re the Q of Stu truthers!
M.L.: Yes. I would love to be. I was supposed do Scream 3. I got paid for 3. Not really well, but I ended up getting paid for something I didn’t do because the idea was that I’d be running high-school killers from jail. Look, it’s a horror movie! Crazy things happen all the time. Have you seen Friday the 13th? Jason comes back — like Stu still could come back.
He didn’t take a point-blank shot to the head.
S.U.: It was a glancing blow.
M.L.: There’s still hope for Stu.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
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