Melissa Barrera Speaks On Her Relationship With Her Scream Co-Stars After Firing

Two months after the production company behind "Scream 7" fired Melissa Barrera over her controversial comments about the war between Israel and Hamas, the actor is speaking about her relationship with the people she got to work with on the horror film franchise. "I'm just so grateful [for] what I got to infuse in the franchise, and that's something I'll be proud of forever," Barrera told Deadline at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah, where she was promoting her upcoming horror-comedy-romance film, "Your Monster."

Barrera — who played Sam Carpenter, the older sister to Jenna Ortega's Tara Carpenter, in "Scream 5" and "Scream 6" — also noted for the publication that she and her former co-stars were family for life. "If we're ever in the vicinity of each other, we always find each other and that's what happened at that event," Barrera explained to Deadline. "When we find each other, we just want to spend the night with each other, and nothing is ever going to change that."

Barrera's firing from "Scream 7" was shortly followed by word that Ortega wouldn't be back for the sequel due to her work commitment on Season 2 of her smash Netflix series "Wednesday."

Spyglass Media Group cut ties with Melissa Barrera in late November 2023 after she came out in support of Palestine in a now-deleted Instagram post, saying Israel's forceful response to Hamas' terrorist attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, was genocide and ethnic cleansing. Spyglass Media issued a statement, via Variety, after Barrera was fired from the series, which said in part, "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." 

A day later, Barrera broke her silence over her "Scream 7" firing with a social media post, saying, "At the end of the day, I'd rather be excluded for who I include than be included for who I exclude."

Responding to "Scream 7"'s controversial Barrera firing in November, director Christopher Landon pleaded with fans in a now-deleted post on X, formerly known as Twitter, to stop yelling at him about the termination and clarified that he had nothing to with the action. A month later, Landon posted on X that he'd moved on from the film: "I guess now is as good a time as any to announce I formally exited Scream 7 weeks ago. This will disappoint some and delight others. It was a dream job that turned into a nightmare. And my heart did break for everyone involved. Everyone. But it's time to move on."