Matthew Lillard may be known for his roles in the wildly popular “Scream” franchise, but when he made the original film, he had no idea it would become the cult classic it is today.
“One night, around six in the morning, I was driving home from work in the back of a car, covered in blood,” Lillard said during a panel at New York Comic Con (via EW ). She revealed that she and her co-stars were discussing their next career moves: Courtney Cox was returning to “Friends” and Neve Campbell was returning to “Party of Five.” “And I was literally doing the pilot and I thought, ‘This movie sucks. Nobody’s going to see it. I’m going to go and be a television star,'” Lillard said.
“That pilot never left, and here we are 30 years later,” he continued, adding that “no one could have imagined” what “Scream” would become. The first film, released in 1996, began a seven-film series, with the final film released earlier this year.
Lillard played Stuart “Stu” Macher, one of the original Ghostface killers, in the film. In addition to Cox and Campbell, he starred alongside Skeet Ulrich, David Arquette, Drew Barrymore and others.
Recently, Lillard got honest about his feelings towards another franchise he starred in: the early 2000s live-action “Scooby-Doo” and “Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed.” While joining DiversityFollowing the ‘Know Their Lines’ video series, the ‘She’s All That’ actor admitted that he started to resent movies after they disappointed at the box office.
“This was the first big movie I was in and it was a big opportunity for me,” he said. “And then I felt like ‘Scooby Doo’ was a big movie, now I’m going to go and be a big movie star. And right around this time, after the second movie, my career went into a serious decline for a long time. Like, I might be one of those guys in the ’90s that never came back. This movie is a love-hate relationship for me because I was like, ‘This is ‘Scooby Doo”s fault.’ I said. That’s why I’m not working.’”