Why Anna Faris thought she’d never do another “Scary Movie”: ‘A concession of my soul’

Key Points

• Anna Faris is opening up about her “complicated feelings” regarding the Scary Movie franchise — including the reason why she never thought she’d return.

• One of the stars of the parody series’ upcoming sixth installment feared returning would mean “a concession of my soul.”

• “I imagined that I would be a cameo and that I would be getting paid a lot of money, but not enough. Not enough for my pride,” Faris tells EW, but calls her 20-year return a “huge gift.”

What would Scary Movie be without Cindy Campbell? Anna Faris has thought long and hard about that question.

The comedy legend’s career now spans over 60 roles in film and television, including an eight-year stint co-leading the Emmy-winning sitcom Mom, collaborations with auteur filmmakers like Ang Lee and Gregg Araki, and acclaimed turns in modern comedy classics like The House Bunny.

But it all started with Scary Movie, the raunchy horror parody from Wayans brothers Keenen (director), Marlon, and Shawn (writers and costars). Featuring a cast of relative unknowns and released into a crowded theatrical landscape (the summer of 2000 saw the release of Mission: Impossible II, Gladiator, The Perfect Storm, and X-Men), the first Scary Movie became an unlikely blockbuster, launching Faris and her costar Regina Hall onto the A-list.

But when Faris looks back, what she remembers first is the fear. “My breath kind of catches when I think about how scared I was. I was a stranger in a strange land,” she recalls in a conversation with Entertainment Weekly leading up to the highly anticipated sixth installment of the Scary Movie franchise. Returning to the role that made her famous 20 years after her last ride, and 25 years since the Wayans were last involved, forced Faris to confront her “complicated feelings” about the franchise — including another fear, that another Scary Movie might represent a “concession of my soul.”

Faris was born in Baltimore but raised in the broody Pacific Northwest. Under the gloomy pines, amid the booming grunge scene, Faris told EW in a previous conversation that she “grew up a cynical Seattle theater kid, hating on L.A. from a distance.” Her parents were a sociology professor and a special education teacher; her brother, Robert Faris, became a professor. But Anna was enrolled in a drama class as a child, which led to a more traditional training in stage acting as she pursued a degree in English Literature at the University of Washington.

“My decision was like, ‘I’m just graduating from college, I’m going to dip my toe in Los Angeles, because I really like this guy, but I don’t have to commit to it in any way. I’ll wait tables, you know?'” she tells EW weeks out from the Scary Movie “rebooquel’s” big open. “I had been surrounded by theater actors since I was a kid. I always gesture like this about them,” she jokes, pantomiming a haughty inhale and exhale from an elitist cigarette. “But [they] had always advised to never pursue [screen] acting, and certainly don’t let L.A. chew you up.”

And yet, Faris was able to “finesse some managers” who set her up with an audition for a high-energy new comedy called Scary Movie in the summer of 1999. “I put myself on tape from my childhood home. Scary Movie was my first audition, and I had never done comedy.”

Faris describes the whirlwind experience of the production, red carpets, junket interviews, magazine spreads, and endlessly multiplying offers for work that followed as an “incredible blessing.” Still, “I found it really hard, through my first decade in L.A., to understand where I fit. For Scary Movie to be so defining for me mentally, too. It felt for a long time like this ill-fitting, frustrating shoe,” Faris previously explained.

Get your daily dose of entertainment news, celebrity updates, and what to watch with our EW Dispatch newsletter.

The first Scary Movie proved such a success, grossing $278 million on a modest $19 million budget, that Marlon Wayans recalled that the film’s producers “chased us at the premiere. They said, ‘We want another movie next summer.”

So Scary Movie 2 was rushed into production, with Faris and Hall even more front and center. That movie earned nearly triple its budget, paving the way for Scary Movie 3 in 2003 and Scary Movie 4 in 2006. Faris and Hall continued without the Wayans on the latter two installments, but everyone dipped for 2013’s Scary Movie 5.

After all this time, the franchise still lingered on Faris’ mind — probably because fans and journalists wouldn’t let it rest. “I really did always think that if I were to do another Scary Movie, it would be a concession of my soul,” she confesses. “Because I imagined that I would be a cameo and that I would be getting paid a lot of money, but not enough. Not enough for my pride. It’s a franchise that I’ve had complicated feelings about in the past. Journalists would ask me, ‘Are you worried about being typecast?’ And I would never know what to say because, yeah! Of course I’m worried! I am not comfortable in comedy.”

Twenty-six years into a wildly successful Hollywood career dominated by comedies, with Faris routinely recognized as one of the most beloved comediennes of her generation, does she still see herself as an outsider?

“I have really come around. I really appreciate that when people do recognize me, they usually just smile. They remember something ridiculous I did, or a joyful memory. That is a huge gift,” she says. And despite those “complicated feelings,” there was always love for Scary Movie. “On my part, I was never, ever ungrateful. Ever. I always knew that I was a long shot, and that my early victory was a huge stroke of luck.”

Returning to her roots has felt to Faris like tying a “beautiful bow on this huge chapter — more than just a chapter. I mean, being defined as a comedic actor was never, ever something I had identified with. I was trying to tell Marlon, like, ‘Imagine if suddenly everybody told you you were short.’ Or in my case, tall.” Coming back to Scary Movie was a profound experience for Faris. “I felt valued in a way that I never thought the franchise would give me,” she says. “It felt very, very, very meaningful and powerful to me to be able to look at Marlon in particular and be like, ‘Dude, I love you. Your family gave me something huge. And I’m beloved by association.’ It made me feel like I’m a big part of an even bigger thing, whatever that is. And I really feel — it makes me choked up.”

Scary Movie premieres in theaters on June 5.

Read the original article on Entertainment Weekly