Before she nabbed the role of reporter Gale Weathers, Courteney Cox tended to be typecast as nice. She broke through as Alex P. Keaton’s understanding girlfriend on Family Ties. She was Monica Geller on Friends. She even danced with Bruce Springsteen in the video for “Dancing in the Dark.” But Gale in Scream was a whole different beast — driven, sometimes unethical, not very nice. According to Cox, convincing director Wes Craven to let her muck with her image took some doing.
In a new interview with Variety (in a bit teased out by Insider), Cox reflected on one of her biggest roles, which she reprises — maybe or maybe not for the last time — in the forthcoming Scream VI:
“That’s a really fun character, especially at the very beginning when she was so ruthless. I was known from ‘Friends’ and ‘Family Ties,’ known as the girl next door and sweet. I had to talk to [director] Wes Craven and write him a letter and say, ‘I know that you don’t think of me as this person, but trust me, I really can be an absolute bitch,’” she says with a laugh. “It was over the top in the perfect way. You really care about the characters because they were unique, and you don’t laugh at them, you laugh with them because they’re smart. If they were dumb, they were supposed to be and they’re endearing.”
In the same interview, Cox — who just scored a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame — also poured a small amount of cold water on Prince Harry’s Mad Libs-y claim that he once did shrooms in her house, saying she wasn’t really involved. Then again, she didn’t exactly deny that mean it happened.