Warning: main spoilers for Scream (2022)
It wouldn’t be a Scream film if Dwight ‘Dewey’ Riley didn’t get stabbed sooner or later, wouldn’t it? David Arquette’s beloved cop character has featured in each entry of the movie sequence, and been punctured in most of them – however on this 12 months’s Scream, the enduring character confronted his remaining stand towards Ghostface. Halfway via the movie, Dewey makes an attempt to complete off (certainly one of) the masked killer(s) for good in a hospital showdown, solely to be brutally eviscerated. With a knife to the entrance and again on the similar time, there was no means he was getting back from that – and if it appeared painful for the character, it was simply as arduous for the actor who’s lived with Dewey for 26 years.
“I haven’t talked about it a lot. It’s a really contemporary wound,” Arquette admits to Empire in a significant new interview wanting again on the enduring function. When he was given the script for the fifth Scream movie, he didn’t know that it will be Dewey’s remaining journey. “That they had not given me a heads-up, so I used to be like [mimes thumbing through the script], ‘Wow, Dewey’s received some good things to play this time!’ After which, ‘Oh, that’s why!’ I needed to put it down, I needed to stroll round and type of course of it. I understood the place they have been coming from, so far as gutting their viewers. It was arduous. It’s been such an ongoing movie sequence all through my life, 25 years of my life, so it undoubtedly reduce deep.”
When the day got here to shoot Dewey’s large second, Arquette needed to stability the practicalities of capturing a giant, bloody loss of life scene along with his emotions of getting into the character’s sneakers for the final time. “That morning, I received up, cooked myself some breakfast, after which I went to work and did the scene,” he remembers. “I didn’t know precisely what was going to occur. We amped up the combat scene slightly as a result of I’m knowledgeable wrestler. We made it slightly extra intense. When you’ve got numerous motion, you’re going to get banged up slightly, and when you have blood on you, the longer it goes it’s simply type of sticky and uncomfortable. So that you’ve received to get right into a Zen place, so that you’re not indignant. And I used to be indignant anyway. So I simply needed to get into an actual Zen place, simply breathe via and know that this shall be over quickly. Nevertheless it was emotional. I did it, and I hopped in my automobile, drove residence, washed all of the blood off, and that was it. I packed up a couple of issues after which hit the street.”
Arquette additionally attributed a lot of Dewey’s loveable qualities to legendary director Wes Craven, who directed the primary 4 Scream movies previous to his loss of life in 2015, with the fifth helmed by Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett. “On reflection, there was numerous Wes there,” he says. “A few of his humour and sweetness was connected to Dewey. I feel shedding Wes affected us all in a very heavy means. He was slightly little bit of an angel to me, so far as preserving my character alive. And Matt and Tyler usually are not! They’re Ghostfaces!” Besides, it was really the movie’s screenwriters accountable for bumping off Dewey. “Then I take it again! Jamie [Vanderbilt] and Man [Busick], you’re Ghostfaces!” Dewey Riley, RIP.
Learn Empire’s full David Arquette interview – speaking his journey with the Scream movies over time – within the upcoming Jurassic World Dominion challenge, on sale Thursday 14 April and accessible to pre-order on-line right here. Scream is out now on 4K Extremely-HD, Blu-ray, DVD and digital.
