Please stop blaming Mikey Madison for Dewey’s fate in Scream (2022)
She didn’t mean to kill David Arquette’s character. She was simply performing the part as written!
Photo by Terence Rushin (Getty Images)
Can we spare a thought for Mikey Madison? After years of being set on fire for cinema, she finally found a role that takes advantage of her unpredictable rage and outbursts of obscenities, Anora. But fame comes with a price, and it’s a price paid by all the dreamers on Hollywood Blvd. Once you succeed, Scream fans will begin blaming you for killing David Arquette’s character, Dewey, in Scream 5. Such is the predicament Maidson finds herself in.
To those fans, Ms. Madison offers a humble apology. Speaking to Collider, Madison admits she was a bit “naive” and didn’t understand that Scream had a “huge fan base” when she signed on to the role. Unfortunately, she knows now. That same fanbase has charged Madison with killing Dewey in the film Scream (2022) despite her name not being one of the credited screenwriters on the film. It’s not like she doesn’t understand where they’re coming from. Reading Dewey’s fate in the script made her “kind of sad” because Dewey Riley was “such a great character.” Sadly, she didn’t know how great of a character he was.
“I remember being kind of sad because I was like, ‘Oh, such a great character. It’ll be sad to see him go.’ And then I realized afterward the heartbreak that so many people felt,” Madison said. “People have come up to me, and they’re like, ‘I hate that this happened. I’m mad at you.’ And I’m like, ‘I’m so sorry, I didn’t write the script!’ I didn’t want to do it.”
Does Matthew Lillard get a similar guilt trip at Scooby-Doo fan events? How about Timothy Olyphant at Justi-fest? Do people hound Jack Quaid at Star Trek conventions? We think not. Ghost-heads, please leave our Scream actors alone. They are merely players and know not what they do. If you have any complaints about the plot of Scream (2022), please direct them to screenwriters James Vanderbilt and Guy Busick, who decided that turning Billy Loomis into Melissa Barrera’s ghostly plot guide was a good twist that made sense. If anything, someone should apologize for that one.