Alicia Silverstone Was Originally Answering The Phone As Casey Becker In The Opening Of Scream
The opening scene to Wes Craven's "Scream" is one of the most iconic (and often parodied) moments in cinematic history. It's brilliant for the way it lovingly pokes fun at cliché horror movie tropes while simultaneously leaning into them, only to eventually shatter our expectations. Visually, Drew Barrymore is the quintessential Final Girl: classically beautiful, blonde, and from what we can tell in those few short minutes we spend with her, a fairly good girl.
All she wants to do is settle in to watch a scary movie with her boyfriend, eat some popcorn, and maybe kiss a little (her parents will be home shortly, so there's really no time for funny business). She talks to the man on the phone with a delightful naiveté that she tries to mask with the brash flirtiness one would expect from a high school girl. She's likable, and we root for her once things really start to get real. This is why it's absolutely shocking when we realize that maybe Barrymore's character Casey Becker isn't the Final Girl, after all. Maybe she's actually the first kill, instead.
Of course, another big part of the audience's false sense of security when watching the beginning of the film is that Barrymore was kind of a big deal when "Scream" was released in theaters in 1996, making her character's death all the more startling. After all, what kind of movie would dare to kill off its biggest star within the first 12 minutes and some change? A good one, that's what. But Barrymore wasn't always the one picking up that deadly phone call. Instead, the original Casey Becker was supposed to be another blonde '90s star, everyone's favorite plaid-wearing valley girl, Alicia Silverstone.
Alicia Silverstone as Casey Becker? As if!
When "Scream" came out in 1996, Drew Barrymore had already made a name for herself as a child star, and she was now a well-known young actress who could garner interest in a film. However, in a recent interview for Rolling Stone, the writer of "Scream," Kevin Williamson surprisingly said that Alicia Silverstone was actually the originally intended actress to star in that famous opening sequence. "I remember at the time we wanted the Janet Leigh ["Psycho"] opening," he explains. "We went after Alicia Silverstone to play Casey Becker, and Drew Barrymore was attached to play Sidney Prescott."
Silverstone had recently starred in "Clueless," so her name would have been a pretty good fit for the part of Casey. However, Barrymore was really drawn to the opening scene. Williamson explains, "As we moved forward, Drew really just wanted to be in the opening scene. She loved it. And she was the biggest name, so we thought, 'OK, that's how we'll get our Janet Leigh moment.'" In an interview for the YouTube show, "Hot Ones," Barrymore explained why she gave up playing the lead for the role of Casey, instead. "In the horror film genre, my biggest pet peeve was that I always knew the main character was gonna be like slugging through at the end, but was gonna creak by and make it," she said. "What I wanted to do is to take that comfort zone away, so I asked if I could be Casey Becker so that we would establish that that rule does not apply in this film."
Williamson also tells Rolling Stone that a lot of actresses auditioned for those parts in "Scream," including the late Brittany Murphy. Ultimately though, the parts were cast perfectly, leading to one of the horror genre's best on-screen moments ever.