David Arquette‘s behavior on the Scream 2 set concerned his then-girlfriend, Courteney Cox, and the rest of the cast.
While speaking about his experience filming Scream for Ashley Cullins‘ tell-all book, Your Favorite Scary Movie: How the Scream Films Rewrote the Rules of Horror, Arquette, 53, recalled how challenging it was to film the second installment.
“Scream 2 was really hard for me,” Arquette shared. “My mom was really sick and about to die. When we had gotten back to L.A., [director Wes Craven] just sat me down and gave me this really sweet man-to-man, fatherly conversation that had a huge impact on my life. It was just about ‘I know you’re going through a hard time, but I really want to see you do great things and get your life together.’”
Arquette’s romance with costar Cox, 61, was affected amid him weathering his mother’s loss.
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“At the time, I was dating Courteney, we were on-and-off. And he said, ‘I think she really likes you, but she’s scared like a lot of people are that you’re gonna hurt yourself,’” Arquette continued. “It was something that not a lot of people do in Hollywood.”
Arquette and Cox met on the set of Scream, which was released in 1996. They got married in 1999 after several years of dating and expanded their family with daughter Coco, now 21.
“It kind of was like life imitating art. The meta elements went even beyond the story,” Arquette told Cullins for her book, which was released on Tuesday, August 19. “We ended up having our daughter and that was in large part because of the advice Wes had given me to get my life together.”
The pair called it quits in 2013 and Arquette has found love with wife Christina McLarty, with whom he shares kids Charlie, 8, and Augustus, 5. After playing Deputy Dewey in five Scream films, Arquette’s fan-favorite character was killed off.
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“I’m still in therapy over it,” Arquette joked to Us Weekly in 2024 about how “harsh” it was to film Dewey’s final moments. “I had to suspend my disbelief. He got distracted by love. That’s what killed him.”
Earlier this year, news broke that Arquette will be returning for Scream 7 — despite Dewey being dead.
“I love playing the role of Dewey. I’ll always love playing the role of Dewey,” Arquette told Us in April. “So, any opportunity [to do it]. But that was a spoiler. It was supposed to be the surprise — and somebody leaked it. So I was kind of like, ‘Oh, that’s a bummer.’”
Arquette didn’t give too much away about how director Kevin Williamson would bring him back, adding, “I’m not really allowed to talk about it too much. Working with Kevin Williamson as a director was tremendous. I mean, he is such an amazing person. I have the utmost respect for him.”
Your Favorite Scary Movie: How the Scream Films Rewrote the Rules of Horror is out now.
