Jenna Ortega was tight lipped after her Scream co-star Melissa Barrera was canned for her pro-Palestine social media posts last year, but the young star has finally shared her thoughts on that matter and Hollywood’s “political correctness” in a new interview with Vanity Fair.
“Everybody wants to be politically correct,” Ortega told the magazine in reference to the situation, “but I feel like, in doing that, we lose a lot of our humanity and integrity, because it lacks honesty.” Soon after Barrera’s firing from subsequent installments of Scream by production company Spyglass Media Group, Ortega herself left the franchise—at the time, she said, due to scheduling conflicts with Netflix’s Wednesday—but she’s expressed support for Barrera throughout and after the ordeal.
Barrera starred in 2022’s Scream and the following year’s Scream VI, along with Ortega and OG cast members Courtney Cox and David Arquette. She was set to appear in more of the films before she started posting about the Israel-Gaza War, including a message that read, “Cornering everyone together, with no where to go, no electricity no water … People have learnt nothing from our histories. And just like our histories, people are still silently watching it all happen. THIS IS GENOCIDE & ETHNIC CLEANSING.”
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Spyglass was quick to take action against the star, dismissing her from future work on the franchise and condemning “antisemitism or the incitement of hate in any form” and “false references to genocide, ethnic cleansing, Holocaust distortion” with a statement.
Ortega told Vanity Fair that the nature of working in the business is one where saying the wrong thing is inevitable. “The business that we work in is so touchy-feely,” she said. “Imagine if everyone could say what they felt and not be judged for it and, if anything, it sparked some sort of debate, not an argument,” she added, but then admitted that that scenario was about as likely as “world peace.”
Original Scream actress Neve Campbell sparked her own controversy earlier this year when she announced her return to the franchise after Barrera was fired. Campbell had previously left the series over a wage dispute, and many fans felt she should have turned down subsequent offers to return to stand in solidarity with Barrera.
