Melissa Barrera is taking over. She made a huge impression in the Starz series, Vida, but her star soared especially high in 2021 with the release of Jon M. Chu’s electric adaptation of In the Heights. Now the trend continues via a headlining role in the new Scream movie.
Barrera joins the iconic slasher franchise as Samantha Carpenter, a former Woodsboro resident who returns home when she finds out her sister’s been attacked by Ghostface. Along the way, Sam crosses paths with the Scream series big three, Neve Campbell’s Sidney, Courteney Cox’s Gale and David Arquette’s Dewey.
While it may seem as though Barrera’s a fairly new rising star in Hollywood, she’s been mighty busy in this industry for quite some time now and a Collider Ladies Night interview gave us the opportunity to revisit some of those other experiences that paved the way to Scream 2022.
At the start, Barrera actually had her sights set on singing and becoming a pop star. She explained:
“There was this show back in Mexico that was kind of like an American Idol for kids that was very popular on TV and a neighbor of mine got cast in it. And so I would watch the shows every Sunday and he would sing and the kids got so famous and then the kids that came out of that show would then do kids’ telenovelas and would act. And so my path was like, ‘Oh, I want to get into that competition show so that then I get to do telenovelas and I can sing and act.’ It was a combination. There were always musical telenovelas. So that’s how I first discovered that that’s what I wanted to do. And I would audition and I would never get cast so eventually, I was like, ‘That’s not for me,’ and then I fell in love with theater and that became my life goal. I was like, ‘I want to do Broadway. I want to go to school for musical theater. I want to do Broadway. I’m gonna graduate and I’m gonna book a Broadway show and I’m gonna live in New York and that’s gonna be my life.’ That’s what I thought.”
With a goal like that, what better place to study than New York University? Barrera did get into the musical theater program there, but during her summer break after her sophomore year, she was challenged to reassess her path again.
“After my sophomore year I went back home and I went and I auditioned for this singing competition show. Actually, now that I’m talking about it, it was like a version of the kids’ show that I always wanted to do, but this was for adults. And so I auditioned for it and I got cast, and I decided that I would go through with it. Instead of saying no and going back to NYU, I was like, ‘This feels like an important opportunity that I need to take advantage of.’ And being an international student in the US, I didn’t have working papers. I couldn’t get cast in something and start working and get paid. That wasn’t an option for me, so I knew that the path was gonna be a little more complicated and I thought in that moment, ‘Maybe this is the path. Maybe I have to start working in Mexico first and then cross over.’ And so that’s where it began. I started singing and then I started doing telenovelas, which is exactly what I wanted to do as a kid and I had never thought about it until this moment.”
Following her gut turned out to be the right move because the stars continued to align for Barrera in a way that allowed her to see many of her dreams through to fruition. For example, after participating in every open call she could for In the Heights on Broadway during her time at NYU and never scoring a part, she went on to star in the feature adaptation in her dream role years later.
As someone who’s clearly able to learn and evolve with every experience, I had to ask Barrera about lessons learned from making Scream that she’ll take with her to future horror movies.
“I learned how fun it is to make a scary movie. Sometimes when you’re dealing with material that’s so dark and so heavy and so traumatic as an actor — and I used to do this all the time, I would feel like I have to be in that head space to deliver. And so I would literally just isolate myself on set and go away and I wouldn’t talk to anyone. From the moment I woke up in the morning, if I had a very emotional scene or a very exhausting scene and, como se dice, ‘ajetreada?’ I don’t know the English word, but something that requires a lot of me emotionally, I would just shut down because I thought that I had to save energy to be able to deliver that and it made me not have fun sometimes, you know? Because you’re in that awful head space for a really long time when you don’t have to be. And I learned in Scream to trust myself that I can get to the places that I need to get to without having to be serious and sad and in that head space behind the scenes.”
After filming Scream, Barrera moved on to the STXfilms acquisition, Bed Rest, a supernatural thriller about a woman struggling to start a family. Her character gets pregnant again, just as she’s about to move into a new home with her husband. Things are looking up until she’s ordered to mandatory bed rest and emerging anxieties turn into ghostly experiences, challenging her to do what’s necessary to protect herself and her unborn child.
It seems as though Scream bled into Bed Rest quite a bit because not only is that new movie produced by Scream alums William Sherak, James Vanderbilt and Paul Neinstein, but Barrera also highlighted an important lesson learned while making Scream that made all the difference for her on the set of Bed Rest.
“I finished shooting Bed Rest which comes out in July and it was such a challenge for me to do that role. Such a contained thriller but very reliant on my character’s journey and my point of view, so it’s the camera always in my face basically, and it could have been a lot. I could have been destroyed after that movie, and I was very exhausted, obviously, because it was a lot, but I also had a lot of fun and that’s something that I took from Scream.”
Prior to filming Collider Ladies Night with Barrera, I had the opportunity to have a brief chat with Barrera alongside Cox and Campbell during which it became very apparent that Barrera knows her Scream films. With that in my back pocket, there was no way I was missing the opportunity to geek out with her a little bit, and opted to ask her to rank the first four Scream films. (Adding in the fifth just didn’t seem fair!)
“I literally just watched them with my whole family over the last week, so they’re so fresh in my mind. And this time around, I’m very surprised, I even surprised myself that I feel like I loved 3 so much more than I ever did. I used to think that 3 was my least favorite one out of the four and now I think it’s tied with the first one. It feels like it lives in almost like a different tone as the other ones. It’s a little bit more campy and some of the characters are a little bit more over the top, and obviously it’s Hollywood and it’s characters in the industry, and it’s so funny. I just thought it was so funny. And I don’t know. Now it has a special place in my heart. So I don’t know if I can rank them. I guess if I could rank them it would be 1 and 3, and then, and then, oh my god! And then four and then two! But it changes! You know? With each watch, it changes. You find different things and depending on your mood, you like different ones.”
Looking for more on Barrera’s journey from dreaming of being a pop star to becoming a Hollywood powerhouse? You can watch her episode of Collider Ladies Night at the top of this article or listen to our uncut conversation in podcast form below:
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