‘I could really suck!’: Matthew Lillard ‘slightly terrified’ to make Scream return
Matthew Lillard is "slightly terrified" to return to the 'Scream' series because he doesn't want to "screw up a legacy" of the original movie.
Matthew Lillard is "slightly terrified" to return to the ‘Scream’ franchise.
The 55-year-old actor appeared in the original 1996 slasher as the villainous Stu Macher, AKA one of the Ghostface killers, and has now admitted he is somewhat dreading coming back to the series for ‘Scream 7’ because he doesn’t want to "screw up a legacy that [they] have".
Speaking at 90s Con alongside his fellow ‘Scream’ castmates David Arquette, Jamie Kennedy, Dermot Mulroney and Skeet Ulrich, Lillard said: "I will say, I can't say anything about it, obviously. But I am very excited and slightly terrified to be back because all I can do is really screw up a legacy that we have.
"I could really suck, and so that's my fear. My fear is that I come back and sort of punish something that I could never have touched and been just fine. I hope I don't F it up for everyone."
While Lillard is set to return to the horror series in the 2026 movie, the actor previously revealed there was a version of ‘Scream 3’ in which his Stu Macher returned - despite the character meeting a grizzly end in the original film.
The ‘Five Nights At Freddy’s’ star explained to Vulture in 2022: "I was supposed to 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."
As well as Lillard, ‘Scream 7’ - which is being directed by Kevin Williamson - will see the return of Neve Campbell’s Sidney Prescott, Courteney Cox’s Gale Weathers, Scott Foley’s Roman Bridger and reportedly even David Arquette’s police officer Dewey Riley, who was brutally killed off in the 2022 revival.
‘Scream 7’ will also feature Mason Gooding as Chad Meeks-Martin, the new Ghostface from 2022’s ‘Scream’ and its sequel ‘Scream VI’, and the actor recently teased the masked killer is "the most brutal he’s been" in the upcoming film.
He told Variety: "It feels like an amplification of what's came before, and there's no better indication of that than Kevin Williamson, who wrote the original, coming back now to direct.
"I think that Ghostface is absolutely the most brutal he's been. I don't want to spoil anything, but there's some stuff that they do to the human body that I feel like Kevin is breaking new ground with."
Alongside the returning stars, ‘Scream 7’ will bring a swathe of new actors into the series, including Joel McHale, Anna Camp, Celeste O’Connor, Asa Germann, Mckenna Grace, Sam Rechner, Michelle Randolph and Jimmy Tatro.
