Melissa Barrera on Life After 'Scream' & Why Colette Ghunim's 'Traces of Home' Matters [EXCLUSIVE FULL INTERVIEW]

Three years after being dropped from the Scream VII production, Melissa Barrera revealed the one thing that would bring her back.

"I love the franchise," Barrera confessed, "I had an amazing time on those movies. But a lot of the hate and the difficulty that I've faced in the last years is because the leadership of that company made it a point to label me something that I'm not, and they never apologized, even when I was proven right."

Barrera is referencing claims that she was fired for social media posts that were critical of Israel's involvement in the Gaza war. At the time, Spyglass Media group addressed those claims in a statement to Variety, "Spyglass' stance is unequivocally clear: We have zero tolerance for antisemitism or the incitement of hate in any form, including false references to genocide, ethnic cleansing, Holocaust distortion or anything that flagrantly crosses the line into hate speech."

Barrera is clear she she had no issues with the franchise, but with Spyglass, "Even with an apology, I wouldn't go back to work with them. Not that I'm holding my breath. I don't think they have that ability. But if the franchise were ever to leave those hands and go into hands that I think honor Wes Craven's legacy more, I think yeah."

The 36-year-old actress played Sam Carpenter in Scream (2022) and Scream VI (2023) films. When production geared up for the 7th installment, Barrera was not asked to return. "I get fired, and I get blocked from all a lot of opportunities taken away from me, and it kind of made me have to reevaluate everything about my life, everything that I thought about myself, my identity. I literally had like an identity crisis." Barrera felt she became the face of a movement that didn't belong to her, but she felt passionate about. Despite the difficulties, Barrera now looks at the experience as a wake up call, "I'm so grateful for it, even though it was the hardest time of my life."

Now, Barrera has found her own voice on the other side. This year the In the Heights (2021) actress made her Broadway debut as Rose in the Tony-nominated jukebox musical Titanique based off Titanic (1997) and the discography of Céline Dion. She also served as the Executive Producer for two documentaries including Life Support (2026), about international doctors working in Gaza, and now Colette Ghunim's Traces of Home (2026).

The film follows first-time feature filmmaker Ghunim, the daughter of a Mexican mother and Palestinian father, as she reconnects her parents with the cultures they fled from decades earlier. In doing so, she makes efforts to overcome her strained relationship with her mother and her own upbringing in the suburbs of Illinois.

"How can I actually use my skills and my gifts and talents to support others," became Ghunim's guiding mantra while making the film over 10 years. "It became a much, much deeper healing journey that I was never planning to embark on." Part of that journey were family trips to Mexico City, and to Palestine, where Ghunim turns into an investigative journalist searching for her father's childhood home. Along the way her parents face their own relationship with the lives they were forced to leave behind.

Ghunim then turns the lens on herself for a painfully honest conversation with her mother about her shortcomings as a parent, and her own as a daughter. She later named Everything Everywhere All At Once (2022) as the narrative comparison for Traces of Home, "It's the mother and daughter relationship. It's the same," Ghunim said through laughter. "You literally just blew my mind, and now I'm just thinking of that scene with the rocks," Barrera chimed in, referencing when Evelyn and Joy/Jobu, played by Michelle Yeoh and Stephanie Hsu respectively, transformed into silent rocks overlooking a cliff: a metaphor for a tedious relationship if there ever was one.

Barrera, a Mexican-American actress, came on to help amplify the doc that she called "necessary viewing," though she initially hesitated when she was first approached in 2024, "I was being gaslit so heavily still, and I [was] being attacked from all sides, and I just didn't know what my life was going to be. Honestly, I was like, I don't even know if I'm going to have a career after this." Barrera eventually came on a year later when she was, as she put it, standing on firmer ground.

Barrera added that she wanted to help get people to see Traces of Home in a theater. "I've always wanted to be an actor, and I've always wanted to be a performer. I realized that I wanted to do that because I would go and see theater, and it would make me feeling things that I couldn't explain." What artists put out in the world, Barrera believes, has a profound effect on people, and she aims to do the same.

After finishing her stint on Broadway, Barrera is headed to Paris to see Dion with her Titanique cast, and lit up while discussing her upcoming orca film Black Tides where she stars as John Travolta's daughter. Beyond singing Chicago and Hairspray in-between takes with the actor, working with Travolta was particularly exciting for Barrera, who is a huge fan of his musical Grease (1978). Barrera recalled her childhood VHS worn from replay after replay. "I realized that [Travolta] was actually, at the time of shooting that movie, he was 23, but Olivia Newton-John was like 30, and I love the idea of like 30-somethings playing high schoolers." Barrera jokes she'd like to get cast in a rumored Glee reboot. "What if we're all 35 playing high schoolers? I think there's comedy in that. And I love it."

Traces of Home is in select theaters now.