In The Heights actor Melissa Barrera, who for the last few years has been playing Sam Carpenter in the Scream franchise, has been dropped from the next film by production company Spyglass Media. The reason, according to Spyglass? Social media posts by Barrera that supported the Palestinian side of the Israeli-Hamas conflict and that, it was claimed, verged into hate speech.
“Spyglass’ stance is unequivocally clear: We have zero tolerance for antisemitism or the incitement of hate in any form, including false references to genocide, ethnic cleansing, Holocaust distortion or anything that flagrantly crosses the line into hate speech,” a Spyglass spokesperson told Variety.
Barrera has yet to comment on the matter beyond her posts, but her firing is just the latest example of the incredible divide in Hollywood (and, of course, the wider world) over the issue of the conflict.
Christopher Landon, the Freaky director hired back in August to handle the seventh Scream outing, posted (and then deleted) this to twitter: "This is my statement: [Broken heart emoji] Everything sucks. Stop yelling. This was not my decision to make."
This is certainly an issue that will continue to unfold and we will monitor the situation as it develops.