In a PinkNews exclusive, rising stars Jasmin Savoy Brown and Mason Gooding talk queerness, sibling energy, and their New York City nightmare in Scream VI.
Word to the wise: don’t get on public transport after watching Scream VI. The latest instalment in the beloved slasher franchise is bloodier, gorier and more brutal than any of its predecessors – not that you’d know it from the beaming smiles of Jasmin Savoy Brown and Mason Gooding, who are living out their dreams while giving viewers complete nightmares.
The follow-up to last year’s Scream legacy sequel, the sixth chapter in the franchise sees the pair return as charming twin siblings Mindy and Chad Meeks-Martin alongside fellow Woodsboro survivors and spiky sisters Sam Carpenter (Melissa Barrera) and Tara Carpenter (Jenna Ortega), who are attempting to move on from the horrors of their last encounter with Ghostface in the Big Apple. In other words, a double dose of sibling energy – and judging by the way the Brown and Gooding hold hands and finish each other’s sentences, it’s a bond that’s just as strong offscreen.
“If you can’t tell, I’m incredibly uncomfortable with Jasmin,” Gooding jokes when the pair chat to PinkNews ahead of the film’s release. “When it comes to scene work, [she] allows it to take on a new form of comfortability and playfulness that allows something like sibling dynamics to come so naturally”. Although both he and Brown arrived as newcomers in Scream V, the sibling quirks, he explains, are now fully “ingrained in who we are as people”, which adds a heartwarming dimension considering all the disembowelings going on around them.
While Scream fans will undoubtedly be excited by the return of legacy characters such as Gale Weathers (Courteney Cox) and SCRE4M fan favourite Kirby Reed (Hayden Panettiere), the latest entry in the genre-defining franchise firmly passes the torch to the next generation, giving equal investment in its new protagonists. While Chad gets a second chance in love after his ill-fated girlfriend Liv McKenzie (Sonia Ammar) was brutally despatched by Ghostface in Scream V, Mindy attempts to solve the latest string of murders on the streets of Manhattan with her encyclopaedic knowledge of horror films.
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CHRISTOBEL HASTINGS 