STALK OF THE TOWN
The ‘Scream’ killer is hunting teens in Lakewood again
Willa Fitzgerald might be the most optimistic actress in showbiz.
When she agreed to play Emma Duvall in MTV’s new series “Scream,” which launches at 10 p.m. Tuesday, she signed a contract with a commitment of up to six seasons. Six seasons? On “Scream”? Vampires might not survive six seasons on “Scream.”
And actually, yeah, Fitzgerald knows that.
“I signed a standard contract,” the 24-year-old Yale graduate says cheerfully. “But your length of stay is always ‘to be determined,’ Anyone could be killed off at any time. That’s the fun of the show.”
Viewers who were around for the original 1996 “Scream” movie, sire of the four-flick big-screen franchise on which the TV show is based, will remember how Drew Barrymore didn't make it out of the first scene.
Not since Janet Leigh took an early final shower in “Psycho” had filmmakers so quickly dispatched what seemed, based on starpower, to be a film’s lead character.
Maybe it’s a spoiler, then, to say that Emma makes it out of the first scene — in fact, the whole first episode — with her blood still safely coursing through her veins and not running all over the floor.
Still, it’s not a show on which to get overconfident.
“No one is safe,” says Fitzgerald. “None of us knows what will happen next, because we don’t even know who the killer is.”
That’s a common enough problem for characters in horror films, and many an unsuspecting cheerleader has been picked off by wandering into the wrong dark room at the wrong deserted lakeside cabin late on a moonless night.
The TV show gleefully conjures that same kind of tension, as high school students in bucolic Lakewood start getting plucked off and the survivors scramble to either find or hide the truth.
But Fitzgerald says spinning the story out as a series sets it apart from the film franchise.
“The TV show is different from the movie,” she says. “In the movie, because you only have so much time, it becomes frenzied.
“We have the chance to explore what happens in between the killings.” And that would be? “A lot of confusion, a lot of grief,” she says. “You do the things that need to be done. Even though you’re in this situation, you have to keep living your day-to-day life.”
Emma, a central character and focal point, is summarized in show promotion as “the good girl” and “the peacemaker.”
“I think she’s a little more mature than her peers,” says Fitzgerald.
While this has gotten her into the popular crowd, she also retains ties to Audrey (Bex Taylor-Klaus), an outlier with whom she was once besties.,
Audrey has now set herself apart, dressing down and filming much of what she sees on campus. She’s regarded as weird, a reputation enhanced when some apparent sexual experimentation went viral.
All that is not incidental to the unfolding of the “Scream” story.
Neither is the more conventional Emma.
“Emma also has an unusually close relationship with her mother,” notes Fitzgerald, since they struggled together after her father walked out.
When the first of Emma’s classmates gets offed, it turns out that Emma’s mother can relate — because the same thing happened when she was in high school.
How many moms in that situation could say “I know exactly how you feel” and mean it?
“Before the killings start,” says Fitzgerald, “Emma’s going through a time that feels entirely normal for high school. She has all these conflicts and problems that are unresolved.
“And those start to be played on as
she develops a twisted rapport with the killer.”
The murders also eventually lead to the unearthing of some sordid and uncomfortable truths about this high school world.
“The killer isn’t only murdering Emma’s friends,” says Fitzgerald. “He’s revealing all these secrets and lies. So the circle of people she can trust is getting smaller and smaller.”
This being “Scream,” of course, the show is sprinkled with plenty of graveyard humor and pop culture references.
One of the less subtle running gags is a class in which students and teacher debate whether a hit movie franchise could work as a TV series.
A particularly authoritative student asserts flat-out that it couldn’t.
Still, Fitzgerald says “Scream” doesn’t focus on laughs.
“I don’t think anyone will see this as a goof or a satire,” she says. “I think most people will find it pretty scary. There’s a lot of horror in the traditional sense. But we do have a balance between the funny and the serious. It’s a roller coaster.”
Fitzgerald says she had never seen any of the “Scream” movies before she heard about the TV show. The original, after all, was released when she was 5.
“I decided not to watch any of them before I auditioned,” she says. “Later I watched them all.”
Back in high school, she adds, she went through a whole horror film phase.
“I used to sit and watch them by myself,” she says. “Things like ‘Let the Right One In.’ I liked being scared that way. I’ve gotten away from that a little, but I was kind of a fangirl.”
Speaking of high school, Fitzgerald said it wasn’t a stretch to play a character who’s 17.
“High school is a very vivid memory for me,” she says. “I went to an allgirls’ school, and the drama is so much more intense in a singlegender environment. So it’s something I still have really easy access to.
“Besides, there’s nothing like being in an actual physical high school to make you remember. You could be blindfolded and you’d know that’s where you were, because high schools have such a distinctive smell. They all smell the same.”
If “Scream” catches on, she could be around to smell it for a while.
Meanwhile, she’s also enjoying the challenge of acting for television. “Before I went into TV, I did a lot of theater,” she says. “The technique of live acting is really different. On stage, you tell the story with words and your body. On TV it becomes much more intimate. They might show just the side of your face.”
With any luck, not floating face-down in the swimming pool amid a spreading sea of red.