Scream 3 - Cast

Cast

For more details on the cast and characters, see List of Scream cast members and List of Scream characters.

Neve Campbell, Courteney Cox, David Arquette and Liev Schreiber all returned to their roles as Sidney Prescott and Lynn McCree finally makes a physical appearance in the series as Maureen Prescott (though only through a hallucination of Sidney), with Sidney now being a crisis counselor, news reporter Gale Weathers, Dewey Riley and Cotton Weary, now host of a TV show, respectively for Scream 3, their characters being the only central roles to survive the events of the previous two films. In an interview, Craven stated that convincing the central cast to return to film a new Scream film was not difficult but as with Scream 2, their burgeoning fame and busy schedules made arranging their availability with the film's production period difficult. The consequence of Campbell's commitments in particular meant she was only available to film her role for 20 days forcing the script to reduce the series' main character to a smaller role while focusing on the other characters played by Cox and Arquette. Roger L. Jackson again returned to voice the antagonist Ghostface and Jamie Kennedy reprised his role as Randy Meeks in spite of the character's death in Scream 2. Negative feedback following the death of Randy had the production consider methods to have had his character survive to appear in Scream 3 including having the character's family hide him away for safety while recuperating from his injuries, but it was deemed too unbelievable and the idea was replaced with the character appearing in a minor role via a pre-recorded video message.

Many of the supporting cast played fictitious actors taking part in the film within a film "Stab 3" including Emily Mortimer as Angelina Tyler, Parker Posey as Jennifer Jolie, Matt Keeslar as Tom Prinze, Jenny McCarthy as Sarah Darling and Deon Richmond as Tyson Fox with Scott Foley as the film's director, Roman Bridger. Additional cast included Lance Henriksen as film producer John Milton, Patrick Dempsey as detective Mark Kincaid, Patrick Warburton as bodyguard Steven Stone and Kelly Rutherford as the girlrfiend of Cotton Weary, Christine Hammilton. Rutherford was cast after filming had begun as the production was undergoing constant rewrites and the opening scene evolved from requiring only a female corpse to needing a live actress with whom Schreiber could interact. Shortly after being cast, Mortimer was found to lack the necessary work permit to allow her involvement in the film, requiring her to be flown to Vancouver to obtain one. Scream 3 also featured the first live on-screen appearance of Sidney Prescott's mother Maureen Prescott, played by Lynn McRee, the actress previously having represented the character in photographs during the previous films.

Lawrence Hecht and C.W. Morgan appeared in minor roles reprising their characters of Sidney's father Neil Prescott and Hank Loomis respectively. Nancy O'Dell appeared as an unnamed reporter, having previously appeared in Scream 2 and would go on to appear in Scream 4 in the same role. Scream 3 featured several cameo appearances including the fictional characters of Jay and Silent Bob from the 1994 film Clerks played by Jason Mewes and Kevin Smith. Carrie Fisher made a cameo in the film as former actress, Bianca Burnette, at the suggestion of Bob Weinstein, with Fisher helping to write her character.

In an 2009 interview, Matthew Lillard, who played Stu Macher in Scream, claimed that he had been contracted to reprise his role in Scream 3 as the primary antagonist, having survived his apparent death, orchestrating new Ghostface attacks from prison on High School students and ultimately targeting Sidney. Following the Columbine High School massacre shortly before production began, the script was scrapped and re-written without his character and this plot to avoid development of a film which associated violence and murder with a High School setting.