Scream Franchise Star Reveals They Asked to Be Killed Off

In the original Scream, Liev Schreiber played Cotton Weary, the man who was imprisoned for killing Maureen Prescott, mother of Neve Campbell’s Sidney. While that debut film offered him little to do, he had a more significant role in Scream 2, though the actor himself recently recalled how he wanted to free himself up for other opportunities and had asked writer Kevin Williamson if he could be killed off in the third film. Despite that death being effective, Schreiber admitted that he now wishes he hadn’t asked for the Scream 3 demise, as he would have liked to return for the recent sequels.

“At that point in my career, I didn’t really fully understand the value of being in a franchise. To be frank, I was like, ‘Let me get out of this while I can. Get out while things are going well,’” Schreiber recalled for GQ. “I just thought it would be fun to be one of the iconic kills from the top. I was working and doing a lot of other stuff in New York in theater, and I was just like, ‘How many times can I play this character?’ Now I realize you can play that character as many times as they want you to.”

He added, “I suggested they knocked me off. Part of the device of the movies is that somebody in the first five minutes gets killed because you don’t expect them to get killed. Which, now, I’m kicking myself for because I would have liked to be in Scream 5.”

In that first film, Drew Barrymore played Casey Becker, with the actor being the biggest name in the ensemble of lesser-known performers. With Casey being brutally killed in the film’s opening, it signaled to audiences that even the most famous actor in the adventure wasn’t safe, amping up the tension immediately. 

Even though the actor’s role in the original Scream was brief, by the time Scream 2 came around, the actor felt he had a much better grasp of the more complete figure.

“All I knew about the first Scream was, I hadn’t really done much at that point, I’d just gotten out of school. And I was like, ‘This is the most anyone is ever going to pay me to walk up some stairs,’ because that was really all I had to do in the first Scream,” Schreiber admitted. “And then the film just took off, on the backs of all these other actors, and Kevin and [director] Wes [Craven]. It was a phenomenon. I had lucked myself into a job, because it was ongoing. Then I did Scream 2 and ultimately Scream 3.”

He continued, “Kevin really was the genius behind the script and he was open to collaboration. All I remember was thinking, ‘This guy’s kind of a ham, Cotton. He likes attention.’ I think that was the piece that Kevin was interested in, that he ran with. I think I suggested something like, ‘Everybody gets their 15 minutes [of fame], Cotton wants an hour.’”

Even though the Scream series is known to deliver fans surprises, we shouldn’t count on Cotton appearing in a future film, as his death seemed to be quite definitive.

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