Wes Craven Made Major Changes To Scream's Deputy Dewey After David Arquette's Casting

A surprise fan favorite among the "Scream" franchise is Dewey Riley (David Arquette), a police officer who's sort of bad at his job. Dewey is never able to catch the killer, and by the third act of each film, he's usually been knocked out ("Scream"), incapacitated ("Scream 2"), tied up ("Scream 3"), or driving really slow ("Scream 4"), always leaving Sidney to face off against Ghostface alone. Making things worse is that first-time viewers don't yet know if Dewey's goofy nature is legit or a sinister façade, at least for the first film.

Despite all of that, the fans love Dewey. Even when there was a chance he was inviting Gale (Courteney Cox) out on a nighttime walk to kill her, we still sort of liked him. A big part of this is that Dewey is not a typical cop archetype, but a somewhat dorky guy who's never intimidating. He's technically the older brother of Sidney's friend Tatum (Rose McGowan), but he's always had scrappy little brother energy instead.

This energy, it turns out, was not originally planned by director Wes Craven or screenwriter Kevin Williamson. As Arquette explained in a 2021 oral history for the film:

"They wanted me to audition for one of the teenagers in the high school. I felt I was a little older, and I also loved the role of Dewey when I read it and the idea of acting opposite Courteney. I was a huge fan of hers. I met with Wes and I was like, 'I really like this role.' And he was like, 'Wow, I didn't even consider that,' because he was written as more of, like, the dumb jock character. I read it as a character that's in a position of authority getting no respect."

Dewey still comes across as kind of dumb in these movies ("Scary Movie" certainly picked up on this trait with its parody of him), but Arquette's right in that the Dewey we ended up with was no longer a jock, at least not the jerkish sort of jock often depicted on film and TV. Instead, Dewey's main flaw is that he's too trusting and sweet, and too easily distracted by Gale instead of keeping his eyes out for the killer. 

It's hard not to wonder what a "dumb jock" version of Dewey could've looked like, though. In a way, it would've helped him serve as a mirror to Gale, with him embodying the stereotype of his profession just as much as she embodied the common stereotype of hers. This approach would've been great for a more mean-spirited version of "Scream," one that was more interested in skewering these character types, but the softer version of Dewey they went with was a better fit for the storyline's more wholesome direction.

The "Scream" franchise would ultimately embrace a true dumb jock character in "Scream (2022)" with the introduction of Chad (Mason Gooding). Chad is the Dewey of the new generation of survivors, right down to his love interest role and his penchant for surviving way too many stab wounds. Chad will never outshine Dewey or work as a one-to-one replacement for him, but he does at least provide a glimpse of what the original vision for Dewey might've been.