Kevin Williamson Reveals the ‘Scream’ Character He Regrets Killing
Chad Collins
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Scream, Scream 2, and Scream 4 writer Kevin Williamson (as if he needs any introduction) recently revealed in an interview with Entertainment Weekly the one character he wishes he’d kept alive in the franchise. Interviewed in honor of Scream 2’s approaching 25th anniversary, Williamson shared several worthwhile insights after more than two decades intimately involved with the premier slasher series.
Williamson recounts napping on set, frantically trying to script the sequel while working on Dawson’s Creek—Scream 2 premiered less than a year after the first—and even hiring his assistant to draft a dummy script to guard against leaks. Interestingly, in that version, Dewey (David Arquette) was the killer. Additionally, Williamson revealed the one character he wishes had been around with the legacy trio if given the chance to do things differently: one Mr. Randy Meeks (Jamie Kennedy).
In the film, Randy’s death marks the transition from second to third act. While Dewey and Gale (Courteney Cox) prowl the quad looking for Ghostface, Randy is assailed and pulled into a van. He’s stabbed off-screen, though Gale’s scream at finding him remains one of the best bits of visual iconography the franchise has. It is titled Scream, after all. Williamson says:
“I thought if you kill someone really important to the audience in the middle, it just ups the stakes. Everything’s off the table. I knew we weren’t going to kill Sydney, I knew we weren’t going to kill Gale or Dewey. Those three characters, for Scream 2, were safe, and so I had to look to the secondary characters. I love Randy, I would have given him a much bigger life had I known this franchise was going to live and live. I would have loved for him to be a legacy character. At the time, I thought it would just be the punch in the gut the audience needed at that time, to really get mad, and get mad at the killer.”
What do you think? How would the franchise look different had Randy survived Scream 2? His legacy is at least honored with 2022’s introduction of Mindy Meeks-Martin, Randy’s niece. What do you think of this news? Let us know over on Twitter @ Dread Central.
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