Matthew Lillard is thrilled to be returning to the Scream franchise nearly 30 years after he originated the role of Stu Macher.
“I was giddy. I was freaking out,” Lillard, 55, told Us Weekly exclusively on Thursday, September 18, of getting the call to join the cast of Scream 7 while promoting his partnership with Exact Sciences’ Cologuard test. “I had been sort of tongue-in-cheek pushing the fact that Stu’s still alive, he went to prison. Like, I’ll go get superhero jacked like [I’ve] been in prison for the last 20 years. And, you know, the Radio Silence [Productions] guys left a lot of breadcrumbs in the movies that Stu was still out there.”
After he was revealed as one of the original Ghostface killers alongside Skeet Ulrich as Billy Loomis in the original 1996 slasher film, Lillard’s Stu was presumed dead after a television set was dropped on his head in addition to several stab wounds.
Despite being vocal about his desire to return to the franchise and fans’ insistence that the beloved character had survived, Lillard says he was disappointed when screenwriter Kevin Williamson confirmed that Stu was never coming back at a fan convention. Turns out, his faux confirmation was just to throw fans off the trail of the filmmaker’s real plan.
“When I got [Kevin] on the phone that day, I was like, ‘You’re such a jerk. You said I was never coming back,’” Lillard recalled. “He was like, ‘Yeah, because you kept arguing to come back, and I was trying to distract everyone.’”
After writing the screenplays for Scream (1996), Scream 2 (1997) and Scream 4 (2011), Williamson signed on to direct Scream 7, which is set to hit theaters on February 27, 2025.
While the details surrounding Lillard’s role in the new film — which also stars franchise alums Neve Campbell, Courteney Cox, David Arquette, Scott Foley, Mark Consuelos, Mason Gooding and Jasmin Savoy Brown — remain under wraps, the actor teased the upcoming slasher with three adjectives.
“Smart,” he told Us. “Familiar — [Because] Kevin’s back, and there’s a familiarity about Ghostface — and exceptional.”
Yet, Lillard admits that he did have some hesitations about revisiting the role of Stu.
“The reality is that I’m a little terrified,” he told Us. “My standing in this film is great. The original Ghostface — spoiler alert! A hundred years later — and I come back into the franchise and ruin it, or people don’t like me, or people are like, ‘That was lame,’ you know, there’s a lot of risk.”
He continued: “But reading the script, having Kevin at the helm, having Neve back, it just sort of made sense. And as a fan of the franchise, as someone that dearly cares about the franchise, I was really excited to be asked. I’m not gonna lie.”
While fans wait patiently for Scream 7, Lillard paid homage to his scream king status in a new campaign with Exact Sciences’ Cologuard test.
“I’m kind of an expert at scary,” he says in the ad, which begins with an ominous knock at the door interrupting the actor cutting tomatoes. After Lillard realizes it’s just a delivery man dropping off his Cologuard test, he adds “a grown man with frosted tips” — a nod to his ‘90s hairdo — to a list of scary things, including “forgetting to screen for colon cancer when you turn 45.”
“I personally have seen the ravages of cancer. It’s a horrible disease,” Lillard shared of his involvement with the campaign. “At the end of the day, if this little spot can inspire people to get tested, that’s a win for humanity.”
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