Scream: Skeet Ulrich Reveals How He Almost Spoiled the Original Movie
Scream's big killer twist was almost spoiled before it was released.
So much of Scream's success with fans hinged on the film's big secrets. It started with the shocking death of Drew Barrymore's character in the opening scene, proving that no one was safe, and ended with the reveal that both Skeet Ulrich's Billy and Matthew Lillard's Stu were the killers. That ending was a massive twist that no one saw coming back in 1996, but Ulrich actually almost spoiled it before his work on Scream actually began.
During the latest episode of Inside of You With Michael Rosenbaum, Ulrich talked about getting the part of Billy Loomis in Wes Craven's Scream. He got the full script with the part and knew the surprise ending, and then had an interview for another film he was promoting. During that interview, he let slip that he was playing a serial killer.
"This was pre-spoiler worries and everything," Ulrich said. "For whatever reason I got the full script and I remember getting the part and I had to do press for another movie I had done. I was doing an interview with Interview Magazine and they were asking me what was coming up and I was like, 'Oh man, I'm going to play this serial killer in this movie and blah blah blah.' And then I Hung up the phone and called my publicist right away... And they were able to stop it."
After starring as Billy Loomis in that first Scream, Ulrich didn't return to the fold until the recent run of films from Radio Silence. It was revealed in the fifth Scream that Billy is actually the father of Sam Carpenter, which allowed Ulrich to appear in a few of Sam's visions.
When speaking with ComicBook.com about whether the franchise could explore the supernatural even further, Ulrich confessed, "I don't think so. I think what has made it such a success -- and when I do signing conventions throughout the year, the fan base is rabid, rabid, rabid, I've never seen anything like it -- and I think what they're into is that it could be their neighbor. You don't know. But I think if you take it outside of what is possible and plausible in most people's minds, you lose a lot of that core audience, so I don't know if that's necessarily a direction they could get away with. They can get away with a lot, but I don't know about that one."