When Neve Campbell exited the “Scream” franchise, she told People in August 2022 that she wasn’t offered a high enough paycheck to reprise her role as Sidney Prescott, feeling that a man would have gotten whatever compensation he asked for. “And as a woman in this business, I think it’s really important for us to be valued and to fight to be valued,” she told the outlet. “I honestly don’t believe that if I were a man and had done five installments of a huge blockbuster franchise over 25 years, that the number that I was offered would be the number that would be offered to a man.”
This is a perfectly valid stance from Campbell — but now that she’s rejoining the franchise (and presumably was offered a big fat check to do so), her comments about women being “valued” in the entertainment industry rings hollow. In the wake of her firing from the “Scream” franchise, Melissa Barrera released a statement in November 2023 condemning both antisemitism and Islamophobia, saying that she “[condemns] hate and prejudice of any kind against any group of people,” but it’s not as if Spyglass Productions saw fit to reverse their decision; they simply punished her for speaking out. Campbell is welcome to her paycheck, but fans should be aware that she’s not supporting Barrera by cashing it.
