Melissa Barrera Reflects on ‘Hardest Year’ After Scream Firing: ‘Felt Like My Life Was Over’

Melissa Barrera is looking back on the “darkest and hardest” year of her life. 

In an interview with U.K. newspaper The Independent, the actress, 34, discussed her firing from the upcoming Scream VII back in November due to her social media posts about the Israel-Hamas war. 

Reflecting on being cut from the upcoming flick — in which she was set to return as Sam Carpenter — Barrera said: “It was the darkest and hardest year of my life, and I had to reevaluate everything.”

“There were times where I felt like my life was over,” she added, admitting that work dried up after Spyglass released a statement in November confirming she’d been cut.

“It was quiet for, like, 10 months. I was still getting offers for small things here and there – I’m not going to lie and say there was nothing – but [the message] was, like, ‘Oh, she probably doesn’t have work, she’ll say yes to anything,’ ” Barrera — who has recently been promoting her latest movie, Your Monster — told the outlet.

Elsewhere in the interview, she said her “fatal flaw” was her “tough exterior.” 

“You’d never know when I’m panicking … Like, am I a sociopath? Because I should be dying right now. Especially after this last year for me, how am I even alive?” she told the outlet.

Barrera starred as Sam Carpenter in both 2022’s Scream and 2023’s Scream VI. Her character was introduced as Scream villain Billy Loomis’ (Skeet Ulrich) daughter and was set to follow in the footsteps of Neve Campbell’s Sidney Prescott as the new franchise lead. Campbell has now agreed to return for the seventh installment after previously stepping down due to a salary dispute.

In November, Spyglass said it holds “zero tolerance for antisemitism or the incitement of hate in any form, including false references to genocide, ethnic cleansing, Holocaust distortion or anything that flagrantly crosses the line into hate speech” following Barrera’s social media posts.

Shortly after the news was released, the actress insisted in a statement on her Instagram Story, “I condemn Anti-Semitism and Islamophobia. I condemn hate and prejudice of any kind against any group of people.”

“As a Latina, a proud Mexicana,” she continued, “I feel the responsibility of having a platform that allows me the privilege of being heard, and therefore I have tried to use it to raise awareness about issues I care about and to lend my voice to those in need.”

In March, she told Rolling Stone of the firing, “I’m not the first person that’s happened to, but it was shocking. I don’t even know what to say.”

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Following Barrera’s sudden exit from Scream VII, it was reported that her costar in the franchise’s most recent two films, Jenna Ortega, also dropped out of the project. Barrera’s Sam played Ortega’s character Tara’s older sister in the movies.

One month later, the film’s director Christopher Landon announced he was no longer involved with the movie, sharing on X at the time that the film “was a dream job that turned into a nightmare.”

Scream VII is expected to hit theaters on Feb. 27, 2026.