Thanks to his role in the new Five Nights at Freddy’s movie, Matthew Lillard has been garnering attention from a new generation of fans who are just discovering his body of work. Naturally, that involves his breakout role as Stu Macher in the first Scream movie, which famously rejuvenated the horror genre in the ’90s and sparked a wave of teenage slasher film imitators.
However, if you ask Lillard about his fan-favorite role in Scream, he’s surprisingly clear-eyed about the whole thing.
“I don’t really care about Stu Macher,” Lillard recently told Collider. “It’s a part I played. It’s like if you’re a plumber, do you care about the house you did down the street and around the corner? No, it’s your job. And I love that job, it’s been nice to have that in my resume, but the reality is that it’s a part I did 20-plus years ago.”
That being said, Lillard has nothing but love for Scream fans who were there from the jump or only just now starting to watch the ’90s staple for the first time. The actor could care less about the movie, but he has a deep respect for the fan reactions.
“What is important to me is that what it means to other people is deeply relevant when you see them all the time, and powerful,” Lillard said. “It’s not something I understood before that.”
Five Nights at Freddy’s is available for streaming on Peacock.
(Via Collider)