There’s a lot to love about the new Scream movie, but a personal favorite component is the introduction to the mother/son relationship between Marley Shelton’s Judy Hicks and Dylan Minnette as Wes.
We were first introduced to Judy in Scream 4 when she was a Woodsboro deputy who idolized Sheriff Dewey Riley (David Arquette) and often expressed that admiration by baking him lemon squares. Judy also steps up in a big way in the tail end of Scream 4, so to learn she’s earned the role of sheriff this time around isn’t all that much of a surprise. But the fact that she has a son is!
Perhaps a young Wes was safe and sound at home when Ghostface last attacked, but this time around, their mother/son relationship is right at the center of the unfolding bloodbath. With the new movie hitting theaters on January 14th, I got the chance to catch up with Shelton and Minnette and we dug into that family dynamic a bit. I started by asking Shelton if she was surprised to learn Judy was a mother in the new script. Here's what she said:
“Yes! I thought it was great though! That’s what’s so fun with getting to play with the passage of time, that it’s been a moment since we’ve visited Woodsboro and I thought that was such a fantastic way to link the new generation, the new cast to the legacy cast, if you will. And just the tie-in. Although it’s never revealed who the father is. [Laughs] Clearly I’m a single mom. That’s not a big spoiler. You get that pretty early on.”
The main ensemble of Scream is rather large and there’s a whole lot to cover in that two-hour running time, but Shelton and Minnette do an exceptional job of conveying the history and the strength of Judy and Wes' relationship with the limited screen time. Given that, one’s got to imagine they put in some serious work to develop the pillars of that connection off-camera. Here’s what Shelton pinpointed as a key quality of the Wes and Judy dynamic:
“I think the most obvious dynamic that we established was that Wes is a bit of a mama's boy and I’m this overprotective — obviously, I’m a cop — I’m overprotective, overbearing mother bear. And I’m a single mom so I think I even put more emphasis on that role of mothering. And so he has to kind of find his way through that dynamic a little bit.”
Minnette continued by further emphasizing the challenge Wes faces as a son who loves his mother dearly, who is also a kid eager to be treated with respect by his friends:
“I think he is a mama's boy, like she said, and he really loves and respects his mom so he takes her very seriously. And I think he’s trying to get his friends to take it seriously too, because I think he’s just a really deeply caring person and he cares about his friends, but he doesn’t want to embarrass himself either, so he’s trying to walk this fine line but he’s an easy punching bag.”
Want to hear more about the new Scream movie from Shelton and Minnette? You can catch our full conversation in the video at the top of this article! Also, be sure to keep an eye on Collider this week. This is only the first of many more Scream 2022 interviews we have for you.