The movie Kristen Stewart refused to star in: “I can’t touch that”
You have to give Kristen Stewart credit for the way she has routinely proved people wrong – time and time again.
When the actor rose to prominence with her role as the moody Bella Swan in the teen vampire series Twilight, many critics were quick to tear apart her so-called lack of range as an actor. While Robert Pattinson was given an equally poor script to work with, it was Stewart who was lambasted most harshly (no guesses as to why).
Labelled a bad actor, people failed to take into account that Bella Swan was just a terribly one-dimensional character. Stewart was not Swan, but not many critics were able to distinguish one from another.
The popular franchise was a huge sensation during the late 2000s and early 2010s, encapsulating that bizarre obsession with teen-centric fantastical media that had a chokehold on everyone. It sandwiched itself somewhere between the magical world of Harry Potter and the dystopian drama of The Hunger Games, but Twilight seemed to have the biggest pull for adults as well as teens, with viewers dedicating themselves to being staunchly Team Edward or Team Jacob. Even middle-aged women were queuing up for midnight screenings of each instalment, which finally came to an end in 2012 with the arrival of a terrifying baby, a sign that it was about time to put Twilight to bed.
Between these films, Stewart attempted to assert her versatility with roles in everything from Adventureland to Snow White and the Huntsman, but it wasn’t until 2016 that something shifted for the actor, who soon leaned into more subversive, foreign, and indie flicks. Collaborating with the likes of French auteur Olivier Assayas, body horror icon David Cronenberg, and slow cinema titan Kelly Reichardt, Stewart has shown a side of herself that has taken various critics by surprise.
She prefers to work on projects that are actually interesting, like her unique embodiment of Princess Diana in the studied biopic Spencer, a performance I’d argue is the finest of her career, beautifully complex and truly emotional. It seems like Stewart has become more selective as she has gotten older, which means turning down projects that she knows just won’t work, even if they come with a lucrative offer.
A few years ago, she was offered the chance to join a beloved horror series, but very wisely, she refused the opportunity. Stewart just isn’t about franchises anymore, with Twilight giving her plenty more than she could ever chew. 2022’s Scream, the first movie in the slasher franchise to feature a new generation of cast members, including Jenna Ortega and Melissa Barrera as the Carpenter sisters, but it also could’ve starred Stewart in a rather random cameo.
The movie was pretty good, as far as modern slashers go, but did the franchise really need dragging out following Wes Craven’s death in 2015? No, definitely not. But if there’s one thing Hollywood loves, it’s milking the popularity of legacy characters, reeling in fans who can’t let go of their attachment to pre-existing material.
Scream debuted in 1996 and became a mega hit, inspiring an influx of meta filmmaking in the horror genre (and even boosting the popularity of the satire genre by inspiring Scary Movie), but every few years, new Ghostface killers have emerged to terrorise Sidney Prescott and her associates. The poor character hasn’t caught a break since Neve Campbell stepped down from the franchise for Scream VI due to feeling “undervalued” by Paramount Pictures.
Stewart wasn’t keen on starring in the fifth installment of the franchise, probably sensing that it had the potential to be a major flop considering that it would be the first movie in the series without Craven’s involvement. While it did perform pretty well, she simply wasn’t interested in the character that the studio had in mind for her.
“So it’s the Drew [Barrymore] character that gets killed in the beginning. And they created a whole sequence where a lot of people got killed to emulate the Drew thing. But it was just going to be one person, and I was like, ‘I can’t do a Drew. I can’t touch that.’ Do you know what I mean? But, yeah, so then they ended up doing, if I’m remembering correctly, a larger sequence and not just one victim,” she told Slant Magazine in 2022.
There you have it, Scream might’ve looked rather different if this idea had gone to plan, but instead we got the brutal opening featuring Ortega’s Tara, who narrowly escapes a grisly demise.
