Drew Barrymore was originally supposed to play the lead in Scream, but turned down the role of "final girl" Sidney Prescott for a very good reason.
The Charlie's Angels star does feature in the 1996 beloved slasher as Casey Becker, while it was The Craft's Neve Campbell who ultimately booked the part of Sidney. In the eleven-minute opening sequence to Wes Craven's cult classic, Barrymore sports a blonde bob with a fringe, a cream V-neck and lilac pants, her cordless phone in hand: a casual uniform which would later become a perfect Halloween costume for many a horror lover.
Had things gone in a different direction, fans wouldn't have had the delicious shock of seeing a character played by a famous actress offed early on, one of the reasons why Scream has established its iconic status in the genre.
Drew Barrymore Approached Production After Reading The Scream Script
But why didn't Barrymore play Sidney, the role she was originally signed up to portray? According to the Scream lore, it was the actress who approached production after reading the script, penned by Dawson's Creek creator Kevin Williamson.
"I just read the script one night at my house and I just said, 'Oh my God, there hasn’t been anything like this for so long,'" Barrymore told EW in 2011.
"I loved that it actually got tongue-in-cheeky but it was still scary and it was this great game that sort of described genres and revived them at the same time and redefined them all in one script," she continued.
"I went bananas."
However, it seems that the E.T. star was happier with the role of Casey, and for an excellent reason, too.
Playing The Role Of Casey Was Drew Barrymore's Doing
The studio was elated to have an actress like Barrymore, hailing from one of Hollywood's biggest acting dynasties, to play a role in their film. It was believed that her popularity could attract a bigger, female audience, while also contributing to having other known actors to join the cast.
Barrymore's decision to play Casey Becker, who doesn't make it past the film's intro, was meant to shake things up in the horror genre. Thanks to a brilliantly misleading marketing campaign, viewers would be tricked into believing that a star like Barrymore was the protagonist and, as such, would survive till the very end.
Lulled into a false sense of security, they would watch the intro only to discover in shock that this wasn't the case. After all, no one is really safe in Woodsboro, where the film is set.
"In the horror film genre, my biggest pet peeve was that I always knew the main character was going to be slugging through at the end, but was going to creak by and make it," Barrymore revealed on First We Feast’s Hot Ones in 2020 (around the 3:15-minute mark in the above video).
"What I wanted to do is to take that comfort zone away," adding: "So I asked if I could be Casey Becker so that we would establish that rule does not apply in this film."
Kicking off on a twist certainly paid off, starting a tradition of spine-chilling openings and cameos in the Scream franchise, with the audience fully expecting a character to be killed within the first few minutes.
Drew Barrymore Spent Only Five Days On The Set Of Scream
For the role of Casey, Barrymore spent just five days on set, directed by Craven, who passed away in 2015.
In a 2011 interview, the actress explained that she and the late director had an "agreement" on how to approach the role.
"[...] and we couldn’t have been more on the same page. I was like, 'I never want fake tears, I will come up with a mechanism with which to really make me cry. I will run around until I'm hyperventilating,'" she said.
"He and I had this secret story. We would just talk about it every time cause it just made me cry every time I thought about it."
Though Barrymore managed to find a way to cry on cue, she had to really go method in order to look flustered while Casey was being chased by Ghostface.
"I would still have to run around a lot," Barrymore said.
Scream (2022) Features A Secret Cameo From Drew Barrymore
Following Craven's death, the Scream franchise continued with film number five, simply titled Scream (2022) and helmed by directing duo Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett.
Like many of the original films' stars, Barrymore, too, returned for a special cameo. Of course, playing Casey again was off the table given the character's fate, but she managed to pay homage to Craven and the fandom nonetheless (spoilers ahead if you haven't watched the new Scream just yet).
"Drew is in the movie. She is the principal making announcements at the beginning of the movie when the camera pans down from the tree to find our new cast at the picnic tables," Scream (2022)'s executive producer Chad Villella told Bloody Disgusting in January this year.
The sequence follows the intro where Jenna Ortega's character Tara is attacked, but shockingly survives.
"We thought that was fun too because that's the same first scene after [Drew's] death in the original," Bettinelli-Olpin added.
Earlier this year, it was announced that the surviving characters of Scream (2022), plus some new additions, will star for an already confirmed sixth installment — sans protagonist Sidney Prescott, as Campbell and the studio failed to reach a salary agreement.
Scream 6 will hit cinemas on March 31, 2023.