Melissa Barrera Loves Playing Unlikable Characters — It Just Makes Her Work Better
There’s a funny little citation on multi-hyphenate Melissa Barrera’s Wikipedia page. About halfway down the section entitled “acting,” we’re told that “following her roles in horror media in 2022, Barrera was crowned a scream queen.” There was not an actual coronation for this honor, but it’s hard to argue with. After starring in two “Scream” movies, the Tubi chiller “Bed Rest,” and this week’s new release “Abigail” (a biting spin on the classic “Dracula’s Daughter”), the Mexican starlet is a bonafide scream queen, even if she was never quite expecting the honor.
For Barrera, who got her start on telenovelas and was introduced to most American audiences through the big screen musical “In the Heights,” it’s another step in a career that just keeps evolving in some surprising ways. No, Barrera told IndieWire with laugh, she didn’t set out to be “scream queen,” but she loves it.
More from IndieWire
“That was never something that I thought about,” she said during a recent interview. “I think, still to this day, it feels weird but also very flattering. It’s cool, because horror fans are so loving and supportive and devoted, and so for them to call me that is super-complimentary and an honor. I’m not going to reject it!”
Despite her more classical-leaning training as a rising star, Barrera still has fond memories of the genre, even just as a rebellious kid. “I was definitely watching them behind my parents’ back at sleepovers with friends,” Barrera said. “You do the rebel thing […] and watching scary movies is what I would do. I grew up loving horror. I grew up loving getting scared, having to sleep with the lights on, playing pranks on my friends, and all of that stuff well into my teenage years, and then I saw ‘Saw,’ and it freaked me out. I was like, ‘This is too much,’ and I literally stopped watching horror movies for years.”
Not to worry: She got back into them a few years ago. Still, she’s got some limits; she isn’t a body horror fan, and she’s not into stuff with “exorcisms or possession” because “religious things freak me out. I grew up very Catholic. I’m like, ‘I don’t want to invoke any spirits!’”
Part of that affection comes from working with the Radio Silence team, who directed her in both “Scream” films and now “Abigail” — “I would follow them into whatever genre they want to do,” she said of co-directors Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett — and the way their brand of horror has opened her eyes to the possibility of the genre.
“Working with them and doing horror movies, I get to do such crazy things,” Barrera said. “Horror is a genre that is constantly pushing the envelope and taking us to weirder and wackier places. What I love about horror is that it’s always metaphorical. All these monsters and all these things represent very human desires, flaws, all very human things. Horror is a creative way of telling stories, and they don’t feel like anyone’s trying to teach you anything. It’s just kind of there, and if you grasp on it, cool, and if you don’t, you had a great time, and your adrenaline was rushing.”
In both “Abigail” and the “Scream” films, Barrera is cast as something of a tough cookie. In the “Scream” films, she’s the daughter of Billy Loomis, one of the franchise’s original killers (what a cross to bear), who still emerges as a steady sister and friend (and not a killer) over the course of her two-film arc. In “Abigail,” she’s Joey, the member of a crew of criminals assembled for the express purpose of kidnapping a little girl (who we, ahem, later learn is a tiny vampire). These aren’t typically heroic, one-note roles.
“As an actor, it really stretches you and takes you to crazy places that you don’t get to do in other genres, so it’s very appealing to me in that sense,” she said. “There’s something very seductive about the darkness in humans, and horror very adeptly explores all of that. I’ve gotten the joy and the good fortune of playing very interesting characters with lots of darkness within, and it’s just fun. It’s challenging, but it’s fun to get an audience to root for someone that is not all good.”
Barrera isn’t too interested in playing “likable.” In fact, she gets way more excited when she finds a role that is seemingly built to be unlikeable. “I find it way more interesting to play a character that feels irredeemable on paper or like, ‘I hate her,’ and my challenge is, how do I make the audience still fall in love with her, not necessarily [make her] likable, because I feel like some of these characters that I’ve played are not necessarily likable, but they’re real,” Barrera said. “There’s something about them that you’ll be like, ‘Oh, I’m like that,’ or ‘My sister’s like that,’ or ‘My mother’s like that,’ just ‘I know someone that is like that.’ That immediately will make you establish a connection, even if what they’re doing is questionable.”
That’s the thread running through most of Barrera’s work, from the big-budget musicals to the gory horror outings (people literally explode in “Abigail”). It’s what ties it all together and drives her.
“I’ve been very fortunate that I’ve gotten roles that are warrior women that are survivors, that despite all the obstacles and the hurdles that get thrown at them, they keep fighting, and they’re tough, but they also show their vulnerability, their fear, and their soft side,” Barrera said. “A lot of people can relate. That’s what I want. As an actor, I want my characters to feel like they’re real human beings and to feel memorable, that there’s something about them that you will remember.”
Barrera pointed to Wonder Woman as a classic example of a character she loves, not just for her strength and power, but also for softer and more relatable traits. “She’s so lovable, because she’s a badass, she’s strong, she’s a hero, but she embraces all of these inherently female qualities: the softness, the lovingness, the gentleness, the nurturing part of it,” she said. “A lot of times in genre films, women are just meant to be tough, and we’re not allowed to show all the nuances and the layers of it also. You’ve got to kind of add it yourself.”
Barrera is hoping to put even more on the page when it comes to her next big step: producing. Barrera previously produced Lori Evans Taylor’s “Bed Rest,” and she’s in pre-production on Egor Abramenko’s “God’s Country,” which will star “Borat 2” breakout Maria Bakalova. There’s also a “bunch of more stuff in development.”
“I started thinking about producing really early on, actually, I just didn’t know how to go about it,” Barrera said. She said that, during her time on the series “Vida,” she even optioned the rights for a book (she didn’t share which, as it’s now moved elsewhere) she wanted to develop. That project may not have worked out, but she couldn’t kick the impulse.
“I realized that, as a woman of color in the industry, I have to create my own opportunities,” she said. “There aren’t a lot out there for us, still. Even in my privileged position, I still struggle with opportunities, getting into rooms, and getting the kinds of roles that I want to play. I do get some scripts where they’re like, ‘You want to do this script about a criminal, about a gang?’ and I’m like, ‘Not really.’”
Instead of taking those unappealing roles, Barrera said, she’s going to get in on the ground floor of the ones she really wants. The unlikeable, sure, and whatever else she’s got in mind.
“I realized that if I want to play the kinds of roles that I dream of playing, I have to do it from the ground up, develop them, and either find the stories or come up with an original story, and find a team, develop it, and then hopefully get to make it, which is hard,” she said. “Getting anything off the ground, getting anything financed is such a challenge. […] When more actors start producing, that’s the real way to kind of reshape the industry into a more inclusive one and into a more even playing field.”
And when she gets that shot? “I will have an arsenal ready of things that I already know that I want to do, that I already have teams, that I already have writers on, that I already have directors that I want to work with,” she said.
In recent months, Barrera has had to prepare for things she might not have seen coming, however. In November, the actress was fired from “Scream 7” after her social media support of Palestine amid the Israel-Hamas conflict. Production company Spyglass confirmed the firing, with Spyglass clarifying that Barrera was let go from the project because her social media comments were read as antisemitic.
In the days that followed, both co-star Jenna Ortega and director Christopher Landon also left the project. (Original franchise star Neve Campbell will now return, with original screenwriter Kevin Williamson set to direct.) Immediately afterward, and as Barrera has embarked on the post-“Scream 7” life, she’s maintained her stance: “First and foremost, I condemn antisemitism and Islamophobia. I condemn hate and prejudice of any kind against any group of people,” Barrera wrote in a statement shared via her Instagram story in November.
While Barrera garnered some support in the weeks that followed, it’s only grown in recent days. As is the case with that “scream queen” Wikipedia notation, another one of Barrera’s online accounts features another interesting user-submitted citation. On Barrera’s IMDb page, there’s only one piece of “trivia” that addresses the “Scream 7” controversy. I read it to her: “Spyglass Media Group (owned by Lantern and Warner) let her go from the set of ‘Scream VII’ for her social justice advocacy.”
What does it feel like when she hears it put in those terms? “Social justice advocacy.”
“It gives me a lot of hope, strength, and peace,” Barrera said. “I got so much support, an overwhelming amount of love and support, and I did not expect that because I was so scared. It was just so beautiful to see that there’s so many people out there that get it, that understand that there’s so much injustice and pain in this world, and that if we’re not talking about it, we’re turning a blind eye to it, nothing is ever going to change. Especially with young people, I just felt like they rallied behind me, and I felt like I had an army around me, and I got just so much hope for our future.”
She paused, perhaps thinking about what this all means in this moment, what it means for her career, for her choices, for the kind of tough work she wants to do. “I know that I’m not the first artist that this happens to,” Barrera said. “It’s unfortunate that there are such shortsighted people in the entertainment industry, but alas, I think I just have to find like-minded and -hearted people to work with. I’m going to be so happy with that, working with those kinds of people.”
A Universal Pictures release, “Abigail” will be released in theaters on Friday, April 19.
Best of IndieWire
Sign up for Indiewire's Newsletter. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.