- - Matthew Lillard shares how he learned Stu Macher would return in “Scream 7”: 'I screamed'

Nick RomanoDecember 7, 2025 at 2:00 AM

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Jessica Miglio/Paramount Pictures; Dimension Films/Courtesy Everett

Neve Campbell's Sidney Prescott in 'Scream 7'; Matthew Lillard's Stu Macher in 'Scream'Key Points -

Matthew Lillard shares the story of how he found out that Stu Macher would return for Scream 7.

Lillard says he "had no idea" Stu's voice would be the ending tag of the Scream 7 trailer.

"I have not told a single soul about how or why Stu comes back," the actor says.

The last thing we hear in the trailer for Scream 7 is the voice of Matthew Lillard's Stu Macher, one half of the dual Ghostface killers of the original 1996 movie. "This is gonna be fun!" Stu says.

Lillard tells Entertainment Weekly he "had no idea" Paramount (the studio) or Spyglass (the production company) would include him as that ending tag. "The only power of anything in this business is saying yes or no, and once you say yes, you have zero control," he says.

While promoting his first Five Nights at Freddy's movie in 2023, the actor expressed his doubts around Stu's return to Scream. He and his cohort, Billy Loomis (Skeet Ulrich), were killed after their reign of terror in Woodsboro during the events of that first film. However, fan theories persisted about maybe he didn't actually die.

Now, while promoting Five Nights at Freddy's 2 this week with Ulrich, he shares with EW the moment he found out that Stu's comeback was for real.

Paramount

Matthew Lillard and Skeet Ulrich in 'Scream'

"I was on a walk. I was on a business call with my company, Find Familiar Spirits," the actor recalls. "I put them on hold because Kevin Williamson called me in the middle of the day."

Williamson wrote the first Scream movie, as well as Scream 2 (1997) and Scream 4 (2011). He now directs Scream 7, which will tell a new story about how Neve Campbell's Sidney Prescott and her family are terrorized by a new Ghostface.

"I was like, 'That's really weird,'" Lillard says of getting that Williamson text. "I had just seen him three weeks earlier at a game night at Mike Flanagan's house." (Lillard featured in Flanagan's Stephen King-based movie The Life of Chuck and will star in the filmmaker's Carrie TV series for Amazon.) "So the moment is immortalized in my mind. I picked up the phone and we had small talk for five minutes, and it was like, 'Do you want to come back?' I literally was like, 'Oh my!' I, like, screamed."

Lillard admittedly has been keeping the fan theories about Stu alive for years. He points to how the Radio Silence filmmaking team of Tyler Gillett and Matt Bettinelli-Olpin, who directed the fifth and sixth movies, set up all these Easter eggs. However, Williamson himself threw cold water on that fire. Now Lillard knows that was all for show.

"When he asked me, I was like, 'I thought you didn't want me in the film,'" Lillard remembers telling the Scream 7 director. "He's like, 'I wanted you to shut up because I want you in the film.'"

Jessica Miglio/Paramount

The Ghostface killer of 'Scream 7'

Now, we still don't know how Stu will return for Scream 7. Ulrich's Billy Loomis is definitely dead and he returned in spectral form to stalk his daughter, Melissa Barrera's Samantha Carpenter. Perhaps Stu will serve a similar function. Fans, of course, have their alternate theories, the prevailing one involving A.I. and deepfakes.

There are also some clear references to Stu in Scream 7 that we know of for sure. The trailer reveals the Macher house, which served as the destination for the finale bloodbath of the first movie, is now being rented out on Airbnb. Meanwhile, Isabel May plays Sidney's teenage daughter, Tatum, named after Sidney's high school best friend and Stu's girlfriend from Scream (Rose McGowan's character).

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"I will tell you, if I have a secret, I am 90 percent gonna tell someone that I have a secret," Lillard says. "And the weird thing is, I have not told a single soul about how or why Stu comes back." That goes for Ulrich, who confirms he's not coming back for Scream 7.

"I've been vocal about that. I'm not," Ulrich says. "When we talked about coming back for 5, it was a three-picture arc for Billy Loomis to slowly turn his daughter into the killer. Obviously, those things didn't pan out given certain things that happened. But, no, I know nothing about the seventh."

Lillard is ultimately pumped for people to see the new direction for Scream 7. "It's testing through the roof," he says. "I think the last regime of actors and creatives were incredible. I think they did a great job. I think the movie was in great hands. I think Kevin's just taken it back in a way towards the original roots. I think fans are gonna be really happy."

on Entertainment Weekly

Original Article on Source

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