It’s impossible to imagine Scream without Drew Barrymore‘s Casey Becker, but the Ghostface-centric franchise would have looked very different if the actress hadn’t opened up about her desire to do something significant and different with the iconic slasher film.
Scream set a standard in horror, and Barrymore had a lot to do with that because it was ultimately her vision for the project. Initially, she was set to take on a different role entirely; Barrymore was meant to play Sidney. Yes, that’s right, Barrymore was originally tagged to play the final girl. However, she didn’t want to continue a horror trope whereby the bad guy just barely grazes the “it” girl, whereas the first powerhouse woman we meet ends up being the final girl — Barrymore wanted to shatter expectations and set a standard.
In speaking with Melissa Barrera, Barrymore explained why she was willing to die in the first scene of the film:
“I want to know how you, being Drew Barrymore, say I’m willing to do this movie and die in the first scene. Like, I want to know how that happened.”
“I thought it was going to be one of the best films of that genre ever made, and I wanted to do everything I could to take away the trope of ‘you believe this character will make it through.'”
She continued laughing after Barrera called her a visionary, and pointed out that there were six additional films, and she doesn’t seem to regret the decision to play Casey Becker. Instead, she looks thrilled that she was able to be a part of something so iconic, even “six gosh-darn films later.”
You’re not alone if your head is still spinning about Barrymore initially being tapped to play Sidney. Many didn’t know her role was initially slated to be a different character. In an episode of her own talk show, she spoke more about the reason she wanted to play Casey Becker, and also shared that her place in the film franchise was much deeper than fans ever knew.
Barrymore calls herself a silent producer attached to the film, in which she was trying to get it off the ground without receiving credit for such. In recognizing the power of the film, storyline, and characters, she didn’t care how it got out there; she just knew that horror aficionados needed to see Scream. She says that many aspects of the film felt “different” and powerful, and she knew that an opening scene unlike that which was seen before would help the process.
“One night, I was at my apartment in New York, and I just had this weird revelation, and I called the other filmmakers, and I said, is there any chance — because I was attached to play the Sidney character — I said is there any chance you would let me play the girl that gets killed in the beginning because this is what I want to accomplish with that.”
The revelation certainly worked, because while the story of Sidney Prescott is the most integral piece of the puzzle in Scream, the role of Casey Becker truly broke the mold. We had mere moments with her, yet she became one of the most iconic characters in the franchise, still to this day. Becker made us fall in love with her with just a few scenes, broke our hearts in desperate moments, and suffered a death that changed slasher films for the better, and it’s all because Barrymore cared more about the project than herself.