Melissa Barrera was quite infamously fired from the Scream franchise after using her social media to express pro-Palestine sentiments in October 2023 (specifically, labeling Israel's actions as a genocide). Unsurprisingly, though, the team behind Scream weren't the only ones to distance themselves from the young actor. "It was quiet for, like, 10 months. I was still getting offers for small things here and there—I'm not going to lie and say there was nothing—but [the message] was, like, 'Oh, she probably doesn’t have work, she'll say yes to anything,'" Barrera says in a new interview with The Independent.
Barrera reflects now that "It was the darkest and hardest year of my life, and I had to reevaluate everything." That included, of course, her career. "Acting is my passion—I didn’t want it to just end," she says. "For the longest time, I gave myself value as a human because of my work. So when I saw it potentially ending, I was like, who even am I? And I realised that I’m so much more than just an actor—I'm a great sister, a great daughter, a great friend. And I'm very capable of finding success in something else if I wanted it."
Luckily, offers started coming in again, so she can continue pursuing an acting career. She can still manage a kind word for the Scream franchise, though she has a complicated relationship with the fandom—even when they're being supportive of her. Sometimes fans will say things "like, 'What they did to you is so messed up, I’m so sorry that happened!' And it’s something, I think, that’s never going to end," Barrera says. "Because the franchise is never going to end. So while I still have so much love for [those movies], the reminders of that very sour moment make it a little bit weird."
