Actress Melissa Barrera fired from Scream 7 over Israel-Gaza posts

MEXICO  - Mexican actress Melissa Barrera has been fired from the forthcoming Scream film sequel after the production company said her recent pro-Palestinian social media posts were antisemitic. The star has posted regularly about the Israel- Gaza conflict, including resharing one post that accused Israel of “genocide and ethnic cleansing”. Production company Spyglass said it had “zero tolerance for antisemitism or the incitement of hate in any form”. Barrera has not yet commented. However, before her departure was announced, she reshared a quote from another account on her Instagram story which read: “At the end of the day, I’d rather be excluded for who I include, than be included for who I exclude.” That post has been interpreted by some of her followers as a reference to her being sacked from the film. Barrera has led the previous two Scream movies and has also starred in the recent screen version of Carmen and the 2021 adaptation of stage musical In The Heights. Other posts shared by Barrera in recent weeks have included one about distorting the Holocaust “to boost the Israeli arms industry” and another saying Gaza was “currently being treated like a concentration camp”. In a statement released to Variety, a spokesman for Scream 7 production company Spyglass said its stance was “unequivocally clear”. It said: “We have zero tolerance for antisemitism or the incitement of hate in any form, including false references to genocide, ethnic cleansing, Holocaust distortion or anything that flagrantly crosses the line into hate speech.”

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