Hayden Panettiere speaks out against Melissa Barrera’s “unfair and upsetting” Scream firing

It’s now been more than two months since the shocking news broke that franchise star Melissa Barrera was being fired from the upcoming Scream VII, with producers Spyglass Entertainment accusing the actor—who starred in 2022's Scream and 2023's Scream VI—of “hate speech,” after she made statements supporting Palestinians during the ongoing Israel-Hamas War. The sudden swerve has knocked over plenty of franchise dominoes for the series—news that co-star Jenna Ortega and director Christopher Landon were both out of the project, too, swiftly followed—but hasn’t generated much in the way of public statements from Barrera’s co-stars.

Now, though, Hayden Panettiere (who co-starred in Scream IV, before reprising her role in Scream VI) is speaking out, calling Barrera’s firing “very unfair and upsetting.” Panettiere is on a bit of a press tour at the moment, as she preps for a three-date series of live shows, A Conversation With Hayden Panettiere, and she weighed in on Barrera’s situation while talking to The Messenger. And she’s willing to address the franchise’s hottest topic: “After she [spoke out], then a whole bunch of other actors and people in the industry started to do the same thing, right? It was almost like she just did it earlier than everyone else.”

While Panettiere hasn’t indicated, one way or another, whether she herself is still on the books for the seventh Scream movie—her character, Kirby Reed, remains alive and unmurdered in the Woodsboro universe—she notes that she reached out to Barrera after the news broke of her dismissal. “You know, a lot of people hadn’t really asked her how she felt. Melissa is such a badass as a human being and as an actress …She was hurt by it, but I think she took it in stride and was very, very gracious about it.”