COURTENEY COX ISN’T AFRAID
The Friends alum on her horror legacy, growing up in Alabama, the dance that launched her career and why she’s never felt so fulfilled.
Courteney Cox has gotten funnier with age. “I’m really goofy; I make a fool of myself,” she says—especially on her Instagram page. Under a bio that reads simply, “I played piano with Elton John,” are posts of funny skits with her A-list actor and singer friends, and clips of her cooking where she’s making faces as well as mistakes. “If I’m getting funnier, it’s because I’m more confident—taking more chances, more risks,” she says.
It’s a sunny afternoon when Cox, 57, sits down to talk to
Parade in a plain gray T-shirt, hair casually pulled back into a low ponytail, a lush view of hills out the windows behind her and a glass of freshly prepared watermelon juice in her hand. By the sound of it, sitting still like this is rare for the actress, who lives with her daughter, Coco, 17 (her child with her ex-husband, David Arquette), and has been dating songwriter and Snow Patrol guitarist Johnny McDaid for the past eight years.
Since Cox began acting four decades ago, she has starred in Friends, Dirt, Cougar Town and all the movies in the
Scream franchise. She recently produced three seasons of the Facebook Watch docuseries 9 Months With Courteney Cox, which was nominated for a Daytime Emmy. And she’ll soon be starring in two new projects that—funny, for a woman best known for comedy—both happen to be in the horror genre.
We’ll first see Cox in Scream (in theaters Jan. 14), a reimagining of the original, which revitalized the sagging slasher genre when it was released in 1996. “We’re not making the fifth of something,” says Cox. “This is an absolute, brand-new relaunch of the franchise”—a meta take on the four prior films, with some fresh faces and the return of some “legacy” cast. Along with two other original Scream stars—Neve Campbell as Sidney Prescott and Arquette as Dewey Riley—Cox reprises her role as news reporter Gale Weathers, who is now “a little less campy,” she says. “I think she’s also happier in some ways. She’s more legit now. She has a more serious job.”
Cox and her original costars are so comfortable in their roles, “I think we were sillier on set,” she says of the new project, filmed without horror pioneer Wes Craven, who directed the first four movies and died in 2015 of brain cancer at age 76. “It was such an emotional thing to come back,” she says, “and I had the same feeling when I walked on the set of Friends
[for the reunion]. I got really teary-eyed then too.” But it was clear to her that Scream’s new directors, Matt BettinelliOlpin and Tyler Gillett, were bringing the same passion, while the new cast brought fresh energy. The result is a movie she feels would make the original proud: “It’s nuanced and it’s funny and you have no idea who the killer is.”
This winter, Cox also will be back on the small screen in the half-hour horror-comedy Shining Vale (March 6 on Starz). She plays Pat Phelps, a nowsober writer of one famously raunchy book 17 years earlier (“a feminist empowerment story,” her character claims) who’s having marital issues with her husband, Terry (Greg Kinnear). In an effort to start fresh, Pat and Terry move from Brooklyn with their two teenagers (Gus Birney and Dylan Gage) to a large, creepy house in the suburbs, where Pat is the only person in the family who sees the ghosts haunting it. And since her own mother began feeling the effects of schizophrenia around the same age, Pat can’t tell if she’s mentally ill—or possessed.
It’s a meaty story Cox couldn’t resist. “Mental health, menopause, possession, depression, marriage, infidelity, raising a teenager—all of it,” she says. “It packs a big punch. They call it a horrorcomedy, but some of my best scenes I’ve ever had in my whole life are in this half-hour show.” Cox relishes the complexity of her character, which lets her push herself in ways she never has before. “I think I worked harder on this part than I ever have. I love this job, I really love it. I’ve never felt this fulfilled as an actor before. How lucky to have this, at this point. I’m so happy.”
DANCING WITH THE BOSS
Cox, the youngest of four, was raised in Birmingham, Ala., in an area she only now appreciates for its rolling hills and beautiful countryside. When she was 10, her parents divorced and she grew even closer with her mother, who became her best friend. “She was a great mom,” says Cox, who shared all the gritty details of her teenage life with her mother, who died in 2020. “I didn’t want to sneak and go behind her back. Whatever trouble I got into, I wanted her to know so we could have a really close relationship—because when your parents get divorced, you want that.”
At 13, Cox got a job selling candy to raise money for a foundation. In high school, she worked at a pool store. And at summer camp, she took to the stage, once playing Anna in The King and I.
But Cox didn’t realize she could build a career as an actress until she got an agent in New York. There, she modeled, booked a commercial for Tampax, played a debutante named Bunny on As the World Turns and nabbed the part that launched her career.
It was 1984 when Cox was famously cast to be pulled onstage to dance with Bruce Springsteen during a live concert for his “Dancing in the Dark” video—which, in a sign of her scream-queen career to come, was directed by Brian De Palma, who made the horror hit Carrie.A day or so before, knowing she had been cast to dance in the audience, she met the Boss for the first time with De Palma. “They both had the flu, or had colds, and they weren’t feeling great,” she recalls. “And when one of them said, ‘OK, so when Courteney goes up onstage,’ I went, ‘Oh, what?!’” And she’s remained on the world’s stage ever since.
MIXING IT UP
While her career has been hot, Cox’s nonwork life is just as interesting. “I’m happy that I have a lot of hobbies. I love to play tennis, I love to play the piano, I love to cook, I love design, I love to act, I love clothes, I love to have a dance party. I just have so many passions
“These last three years have been more of a learning thing than any other time in my life.”
in life.” And the pandemic only magnified them.
For one thing, she learned to appreciate a clean, organized home so much that she’s launching her own product line, Home Court, an upscale, direct-to-consumer brand of “beauty products for the home,” like dish soap, candles and counter spray. And she now cooks about four nights a week for herself and her daughter. Cox’s relationship with Coco, a senior in high school, mirrors the close one she had with her own mother: “She says to me, ‘Mom, no one tells their mother things like I tell you.’ And it’s true! She knows she can trust me. I love our friendship in that way.”
One of Cox’s other hobbies: hosting star-studded music nights on Sundays at her home. That’s how she met McDaid, when her singer-songwriter friend Ed Sheeran invited him over. “I just remember thinking,
Oh, that guy is handsome, and look at those eyes!” she recalls. “We ended up having a date, like, three weeks later.” They’ve now been together eight years. “You would think that having a musician that travels would be annoying, but I actually love it!” says Cox. “I love music.” Which is why she’s made music a part of her life—and why she began taking piano lessons as an adult.
The hardest part about learn