Neve Campbell had her reasons for not returning to the long-running “Scream” franchise as Sidney Prescott, survivor of relentless killer Ghostface.
Two months after announcing that she won’t join the franchise’s upcoming installment because of a pay dispute, Campbell told People that she did not feel what she was being offered “equated to the value that I bring to this franchise.”
“As a woman in this business, I think it’s really important for us to be valued and to fight to be valued,” she said in the interview, published Monday.
For 25 years, Campbell appeared as Prescott alongside characters played by Courteney Cox and David Arquette. She most recently appeared in the January 2022 sequel, “Scream.” The reboot debuted to $30.6 million in ticket sales in its opening weekend, surpassing “Spider-Man: No Way Home.”
Echoing her original sentiments from June, Campbell also told People that she might’ve had it easier, offer-wise, if she were a male actor. She said she didn’t believe “that the number I was offered would be the number that would be offered to a man.”
“I just couldn’t do that,” she said.
She previously said that the decision to distance herself from the latest “Scream” project was “very difficult,” but said Monday that she couldn’t subject herself to “feeling undervalued and feeling the unfairness” around her offer.
“I really just couldn’t bear the idea of walking onto [the set of the sixth film] and feeling undervalued,” she added.
After she made her initial announcement in June, Campbell’s “Scream” co-stars Jamie Kennedy and Matthew Lillard backed her up.
“How can you make ‘Scream’ without Sidney Prescott?,” Kennedy asked in a YouTube video. “It’s her story, her POV, her pain. Everything is her. She’s the heroine.”
Lillard tweeted that Campbell not “getting paid her worth is straight up sexism. I think it’s horrible. There. I said it.”
“Scream 6″ is set to debut on March 31, 2023.