Parker Posey read poetry to Scott Foley on the Scream 3 set

Nothing sounds dreamier than the Parker Posey reading poetry to you out loud. In this case, we must live vicariously through Scandal star Scott Foley, who experienced this scenario filming Scream 3. Foley revisited his memories on the set of the 2000 movie while talking to The A.V. Club, describing his time with co-stars like Posey, Neve Campbell, and Patrick Dempsey.

“Parker used to take me by the hand, walk me to the lawn of whatever location we were on, and read poetry to me,” he said. And everyone else on set wished they were him, right? Foley also said he had been a huge fan of the first two movies and the leading trio of Neve Campbell, David Arquette, and Courteney Cox. “I watched Neve on Party Of Five for years. I don’t think I’ve ever said this but I had a little crush on her. She was great to work with.”

Foley might’ve appeared in multiple episodes of Grey’s Anatomy years later, but he first worked with Dempsey in Scream 3. They played killer Roman Bridger and detective Mark Kincaid, respectively. The two actors bonded over, as adults do, the housing market. “Prior to Grey’s Anatomy, Patrick and I would talk about buying real estate in Maine because he’s from there,” Foley noted. “So yeah I just had such a great time.”

Directed by Wes Craven, Scream 3 was the last film of the iconic original trilogy, and here’s this writer’s truth: the movie is severely underrated. It’s unfairly looked down upon compared to its previous counterparts, or even some of the newer installments. But anyone who says it isn’t fun is wrong; embracing the genre’s meta quality by setting the story on a Hollywood film set was a campy, coy way to wrap up the slasher franchise everyone was obsessed with in the ‘90s. And the world might be coming around on it, much to Foley’s relief. “In the past 10 years, there’s been a resurgence. I get more people coming up to me asking for autographs and pictures because of that movie. I’m proud of it.”

Scott Foley didn’t know he was the Scream 3 killer when cast

Foley also reflected on his time with Craven, especially how he was told Roman was the notorious Ghostface. “They didn’t tell me I was the killer when I was cast. They kept everything so hush-hush. Back in those days, I don’t think we had email. We’d get scripts with big blacked-out pages so we couldn’t read or photocopy any pages. It was two weeks into shooting. Wes was behind the camera at Video Village. He called me. I was a 20-something kid so I was excited. He said ‘Do you know what’s going on here?’ I was like ‘Yeah, we’re shooting this scene.’ He said, ‘Do you know who your character is?’ and I go ‘I’m the director of the fake movie.’ He just said ‘You’re the killer,’ and I said, ‘Oh, what?’ It was great.”

As great as the films were, the franchise successfully returned with Scream 4 and, more recently, with the fifth and sixth movies. But it’s safe to say the studio messed up big time in the past few months by letting go of Campbell and firing Melissa Barrera, on top of Jenna Ortega’s reportedly planned exit. At this point, it may be best if there was no Scream 7. While they fumbled the bag on a surefire hit, at least we can always revisit the original movies.

Meanwhile, Scream 3 might’ve been his big-screen debut, but Foley is best known for his TV roles, including Felicity, Scrubs, The Unit, Scandal, and Grey’s Anatomy. He’ll next appear in Max’s The Girls On The Bus, a political drama loosely based on Amy Chozick’s novel, Chasing Hilary. The series co-stars Melissa Benoist, Carla Gugino, Natasha Behnam, and Christina Elmore and premieres on March 14.