Actress Melissa Barrera said she was “blacklisted” from Hollywood over her outspoken support for Palestinians, telling the Latino USA podcast that her firing from the “Scream” franchise was part of a broader pattern of retaliation against people who spoke out about the war in Gaza.
Ms. Barrera, who starred in the 2022 “Scream” revival and 2023’s “Scream VI,” was dropped from the franchise’s seventh installment after Spyglass Media Group determined that her social media posts about Israel’s military campaign in Gaza had crossed into hate speech. The studio said at the time it had “zero tolerance for antisemitism or the incitement of hate in any form,” a characterization Ms. Barrera has rejected.
“There are a lot of people that got fired for basically saying Palestinians deserve human rights and they shouldn’t be getting bombed and attacked in this way,” she said on the podcast.
Speaking with host Maria Hinojosa on the podcast’s Friday episode, Ms. Barrera agreed she had been blacklisted by the “Scream” producers but said “a lot of people got fired from their jobs, not just in the entertainment industry” for expressing similar views. She argued that those who lost work were simply saying “Palestinians deserve human rights and they shouldn’t be getting bombed and attacked.”
Ms. Barrera went on to compare tactics she said were used in Gaza to methods employed along the U.S. border and by American police, telling Ms. Hinojosa that “the same tactics that were used over there, the same surveillance mechanisms” are now being used domestically. Ms. Hinojosa agreed, citing border walls and checkpoints as parallel examples.
Despite the professional fallout, Ms. Barrera said she has moved forward. She’s now starring on Broadway as Rose in the musical parody “Titanique,” a role she landed after her Hollywood career stalled, and she’s an executive producer on the documentary “Traces of Home,” which follows a Mexican-Palestinian family and is set for a theatrical release this fall. She’s also launching her own production company.
“I was one of a lot of people that faced consequences, but I’m on Broadway now,” she said, according to TheWrap. “I’m still here.”
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