ONTD Original: Casting Sidney Prescott in Scream
This year marks the 25th anniversary of the original Scream film, directed by Wes Craven and written by Kevin Williamson. Aside from some exceptional releases in the early 1990s, Scream ultimately broke barriers within the horror genre. It created a new wave of slasher films where smart, self-aware teenagers are pitted against crazed killers. With this resurrection of the slasher film, enter a new breed of Final Girls in the form of Sidney Prescott.
In this second installment of an ONTD Original: Final Girls, we will take a look at how Neve Campbell landed the iconic role as well as the other actresses who were in the running.
After selling his screenplay for a project called Killing Mrs. Tingle, screenwriter Kevin Williamson discovered a new plan for a film after the Tingle project never came to fruition. After watching a special on the Gainesville Ripper while housesitting, Williamson came up with the idea for Scream (Formerly known as, Scary Movie). Williamson introduced audiences with a fresh take on Final Girl in Scream, which satirized previous slasher films and their tropes.
"I wanted to present the tropes but I also wanted to turn them on their heads a bit," says Williamson. "[but] I did want to follow the conventions of a horror film and I wanted a Final Girl."
Sidney Prescott is a vulnerable, nervous girl at 17 years old. Only a year before, her mother was sexually assaulted and murdered by an unknown assailant. Prescott was the star witness, but ultimately falsely identified the killer. It's presumed that during the trial, Prescott learned of her mother's salacious secrets. This would haunt her for a majority of her young life.
Over the course of the film, Sidney develops the ability to fight back against her attackers. By the end of the film, the killers realize they miscalculated Sidney's vulnerability. Because of this, Sidney comes out as the heroine of the film.
"The biggest mistake you can make is underestimating kids,” Williamson says. “I try to write smart, sophisticated characters.”
While writing the initial screenplay for Scream, Williamson had a Molly Ringwald-type in mind for Sidney. This derives from a childhood
friend whom he said resembled Ringwald. This same friend was with him the night he watched John Carpenter's Halloween during its initial release. Long before Barrymore's initial casting, it's rumored that Williamson actually offered the role of Sidney to Ringwald, but she turned it down citing she didn't want to play a teenager at the age of 27 (Neve Campbell was 23 when she played the role). Ringwald would later go on to have a cameo in Williamson's Killing Mrs. Tingle (changed to Teaching Mrs. Tingle). Funny enough, Ringwald would also star in Cut, a post-Scream Australian slasher that satirized other slasher films.
"I was sort of producing [Scream] silently. That's basically trying to get the project off-the-ground without a credit, which was fine. I just really believed in the project," Drew Barrymore tells her audience during her talk show. She continues, "I thought the writing was something that felt very different. I feel like the horror genre is very cyclical and it had been ten years since A Nightmare on Elm Street, which is actually why we decided to go to Wes Craven. And before that it was John Carpenter's Halloween. I just thought that every decade somebody really knocks it out of the park in this genre and I was convinced that this script was that. So, I was really passionate about it."
Initially Barrymore was signed on to portray the inviolable Sidney Prescott, which is one of the reasons why Craven first signed onto the project - he had previously passed. To Craven's surprise, Barrymore had a different idea.
"One night I was in my apartment in New York and I just had this weird revelation," Barrymore says, "I called the other filmmakers and asked, 'is there any chance that you would let me play the girl [Casey Becker] who gets killed in the beginning?' What if I die, and then it'll be like all bets are off and anybody can get killed in this movie. We could take away that sort-of cliché safety net of the girl always gets away."
Barrymore's decision momentarily caused Craven to rethink his role as director, but ultimately he understood the reasoning behind it.
Kevin Williamson said, "I was happy to hear that because I always saw it as sort of the Janet Leigh [from Psycho] opening. You wanted the biggest star to be in the first moment of the
movie. That’s why the scene is so long because I wanted to keep Casey Becker alive just long enough where you think she’s the lead of the movie and that she’s going to survive this moment. It ended up just working out beautifully that Drew liked that part and then we could cast whoever we wanted for Sidney."
"It was a hard search, because you had to have an actress who was vulnerable as well as being very strong and that was a tough dichotomy to find in an actress," says Casting Director Lisa Beach.
"A lot of agents didn't want to put their actresses in, quote, that kind of movie. So we looked at a lot of new, fresh faces, and we came in contact with Neve. She's soulful; there's a lot going on below the surface," recalls Producer Cathy Konrad.
Neve Campbell decided to audition for Sidney while she was on hiatus after her third season of Party of Five. "I had actually done The Craft the year before," Neve recalls. "I wasn't necessarily sure whether I wanted to do another scary-type of movie. I wasn't very certain about the choice, but I really wanted to work for Wes."
“I did two auditions and then I did a screen test,” Neve recalls. “It was down to two people. I always have a hard time just being cast in something without auditioning, only because I love the concept of auditioning - of going in and having the challenge of being able to impress and win the role.”
Click to view"By the time we got to the screen test process, we all wanted Neve. So I remember we front-loaded the reel. We put her first so that everyone had to top her. No one did. She was Sidney. It was so obvious," says Kevin Williamson.
"We had great choices, it just really came down to the subtle nuances of who really was Sidney Prescott," says Lisa Beach.
"I liked the fact that my character goes from being somewhat of a victim in the beginning of the film, to becoming much stronger and empowered by the end of the film," Neve Campbell says.
In the film's audio commentary, Craven says while editing he noticed how Campbell had a habit of touching her hair or her face, he mentioned this to Campbell who replied, "oh my god, now I'm going to be self-conscious for the rest of my life." This could be a result of Campbell's own anxiety as an actress, but it translated as Prescott's own discomfort.
"Neve Campbell just embodied the innocence, the freshness - she was just perfect," says Lisa Beach.
During the making of the film, Campbell felt uncomfortable about a certain line which joked about Tori Spelling. At the time, Spelling was known for the Lifetime movies she played in.
"I begged Wes to change the line," Campbell says. Craven had Sidney do the lines using several names, including Babe, the pig, "to show the studio we're shooting the script," Campbell says. The original line stayed intact.
"I auditioned for Neve's part, so I knew it was in there," Spelling says. "The only thing that bothered me was when I was in the theater and I heard people laugh at the line."
Campbell felt so bad that she wrote Spelling a letter, but had ran into her at another audition before she could send it. "I said that I felt really bad about it and that she really didn't deserve the kind of treatment she got from the press. It was hard, because we'd been acquaintances before the film and she's always been a sweetheart to me. But she was great when I apologized. She was like, "No, it's OK. It's just the business."
"Wes Craven had heard I had a sense of humor about it. So for Scream 2, in which they actually are making a movie about Neve Campbell's character's life, he asked me to do a cameo playing myself, playing her. Finally-a chance to be in on the joke. I loved it," Spelling says in her memoir Stori Telling.
According to producer Marianne Maddalena, actresses Alicia Witt and the late Brittany Murphy auditioned and had screen tests for the role.
"I remember being in a dressing room being made up for the screen test," Neve Campbell says. "I could hear the other actress who was up for the role in the room next to me. It felt so surreal to know that she would be feeling the same way I felt and that only one of us would get the role."
Much like Ringwald, Witt and Murphy would also be able to substitute the loss of their role as Final Girl Sidney in other films. Alicia Witt would go on to portray Natalie in Urban Legend, a Scream-like take on Urban Legends. Brittany Murphy would portray Jody in Cherry Falls, a slasher using virginity as a plot.
Other actresses in the running were AJ Langer, Vinessa Shaw and Melissa Joan Hart.
In the course of 25 years there have been 3 sequels, and Neve Campbell went on to portray Sidney Prescott in every one of them. Campbell will again reprise the role in 2022's Scream, opening on January 14th.
Non-spoilery teaser for Scream (2022) #Scream #ScreamMovie pic.twitter.com/P9c69XB8HU
- 🖤 (@GuadaL00py) October 12, 2021
In the course of 25 years there have been 3 sequels, and Neve Campbell went on to portray Sidney Prescott in every one of them. Campbell will again reprise the role in 2022's Scream, opening on January 14th.
SOURCE: Scream: The Inside Story | Still Screaming: The Ultimate Scary Movie Retrospective | The Making-of Scream | Neve Campbell by Kathleen Tracy | Twitter | Out On Film Festival interview
ONTD Original: Final Girls of Non-Horror Films