Scott Foley Recalls Learning He Was “Scream 3” Villain '2 Weeks Into Shooting': 'They Kept Everything So Hush-Hush'

Wes Craven, director of 2000’s ‘Scream 3,’ waited until after Scott Foley was cast to tell him he was playing Ghostface

Scott Foley is recalling how one of his most famous roles was top-secret — even from himself.

Spoiler alert for 2000’s Scream 3: Foley, now 51, played film director Roman Bridger, later revealed to be the story’s vengeful killer Ghostface. He told The A.V. Club in an interview published Monday that when he joined the sequel's cast, the filmmakers left that detail out.

“They didn't tell me when I was cast that I was the killer,” the actor said.

“They kept everything so hush-hush back in those days. I don't even think there was email then. We'd get scripts with big, blacked-out pages so we couldn't read or photocopy any of the pages because they wanted to keep everything so secret.”

Related: Who Is Ghostface in 'Scream' ? A Guide to All the Killers in the Franchise

Not until “maybe two weeks into shooting” did horror master Wes Craven, the late director behind the first four Scream films, reveal the character’s secret to Foley, he recalled. “Wes was sitting behind the camera at video village, and called me over. And I was a 20-something-year-old kid and I was so excited.

“He said, ‘You know what's going on here, right?' And I said 'Yeah, we're shooting this scene.’ And he said, 'You know what your character is?' And I said, 'Yeah, I'm the director of the fake movie.’ And he said, 'You're the killer.' ”

When Foley reacted with surprise, he remembered, Craven “was like, ‘Shh!’ ”

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Scream 3 starred returning cast members Neve Campbell as Sidney Prescott, Courteney Cox as Gale Weathers, and David Arquette as Dewey Riley. Joining the franchise for that installment, which follows the events of 1997’s Scream 2, were Emily Mortimer, Parker Posey, Lance Henriksen, Jenny McCarthy, Matt Keeslar, Deon Richmond and Foley, all playing production team members of the story’s movie-within-a-movie, Stab 3.

“Scream 3 sort of is, I don’t know, the bastard stepchild of the Scream trilogy — or now, what are there, nine films?” Foley said in a 2021 SiriusXM interview, in which he said being one of the franchise’s Ghostfaces was “an honor.”

“I think they did a good job, for a third film in a trilogy when there was only one planned,” he added at the time.

Meanwhile, an on-set friendship developed between Foley and Posey, he recalled. “After lunch being on set, Parker would just grab my hand, she took me down to a lawn, and she read poetry to me. And I sat there and thought, ‘What is happening? This is amazing and bizarre.’ And I had such a crush on her.”

Related: Courteney Cox Says There Was 'Nothing Worse' Than Her Infamous 'Scream 3' Baby Bangs

Speaking to A.V. Club, Foley reflected on the sequel’s legacy over two decades later. “In the past 10 years there's been a renaissance, a resurgence,” the Scandal star noted. “I get more people coming up and asking for autographs and pictures from that movie than maybe for anything else."

Campbell led the first several Scream films until sitting out 2023’s sixth entry due to “feeling undervalued,” she said in 2022. The actress then announced on March 12 that she will return as Sidney in the upcoming installment.

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