David Arquette is thrilled to be reprising his role as Deputy Dewey in Scream 7 after the character’s shocking and gruesome death — but his return to the franchise wasn’t supposed to be public knowledge.
“I love playing the role of Dewey. I’ll always love playing the role of Dewey,” Arquette, 53, exclusively told Us Weekly while discussing his new film Mob Cops. “So, any opportunity [to do it]. But that was a spoiler. It was supposed to be the surprise — and somebody leaked it. So I was kind of like, ‘Oh, that’s a bummer.’”
Deadline confirmed in March that Arquette would be back as Dewey after being killed off in Scream 5. Matthew Lillard and Scott Foley, who portrayed Ghostface in the first and third film, respectively, are also slated to return despite both being offed by Final Girl Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell).
In what capacity the three seemingly dead characters will appear remains tightly under wraps — “I’m not really allowed to talk about it too much,” Arquette confessed — but fans of the movies are excited to see what director Kevin Williamson (who wrote the scripts for Scream, Scream 2 and Scream 4) will deliver.
Arquette is equally as thrilled. “Working with Kevin Williamson as a director was tremendous,” Arquette gushed to Us. “I mean, he is such an amazing person. I have the utmost respect for him.”
Arquette starred as Deputy Dewey Riley in the original film and was introduced as the brother of Tatum Riley (Rose McGowan) and bumbling police officer trying to get to the bottom of a string of mysterious murderers in Woodsboro. He was killed in the fifth movie by Amber Freeman (Mikey Madison), who was half of a Ghostface team with Jack Quaid’s Richie.
While speaking to Us last year, Arquette confessed that Dewey’s final moments were “harsh” for him to experience, noting, “I’m still in therapy over it.”
Dewey’s death was aggressively brutal; He was stabbed repeatedly by Ghostface with multiple knives before being sliced open and left to bleed out. In his final moments, he found solace in Gale’s (Courteney Cox) face, smiling as Ghostface tells him it’s been an “honor” to murder him. (Dewey and Gale, who got together in the 1996 movie, are divorced by Scream 5, mirroring Arquette and Cox’s real-life split. Cox is also set to reprise her role for Scream 7.)
Dewey’s demise came after original director Wes Craven’s death at age 76 in 2015, which Arquette felt was poignant.
“I do think that Dewey represented Wes in a big way. At least like part of his lighter, comedic side,” Arquette told Us in July 2024. “We had a lot of fun throughout the years in finding humor with Dewey’s character, and a lot of that humor was Wes. He’d come up and tell me to eat an ice cream cone and then stomp on it like it was a cigarette. Like, these silly things that were so Wes. … He gave [Dewey] humor and I think he really kind of connected with that character.”
Arquette noted that after playing Dewey across decades, he felt the character would have made different decisions that could have saved his life — “Dewey would have shot he killer in the head!” he said — but ultimately agreed that Scream 5 directors Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett gave Dewey the “heroic goodbye” he deserved. He does, however, have a few qualms about how it all went down.
“I had to suspend my disbelief. He got distracted by love,” Arquette joked. “That’s what killed him.”
While waiting to see how Dewey makes his grand return in Scream 7, which is currently in production, Arquette is celebrating the release of his new film Mob Cops, which follows him as Sammy Canzano, an army veteran and dirty NYPD detective who gets mixed up with the mob alongside partner Leo Benetti (Jeremy Luke). The story is loosely based on the careers of Stephen Caracappa and Louis Eppolito, who were indicted by federal authorities on charges of racketeering conspiracy for a pattern of murders, kidnappings, witness tampering, obstruction of justice, money laundering and narcotics dealing with mobsters and mob associates from the 1980s to the early 2000s.
Best known for his comedic roles, Arquette had to take a new approach when taking on the part of Sammy.
“The interesting thing about playing a villain is you try to find the humanity in it,” he explained. “As strange as that sounds, you find it, [and] try to figure out why he’s doing it the way he thinks. And for [Sammy], for me, this character didn’t think he was doing anything really wrong. I mean, he was a Vietnam vet and experienced; He’d been a cop for years. He saw what he was doing was getting some bad people off the street, getting paid some money so he could take care of his family.”
Mob Cops is in theaters now.
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