Courteney Cox Convinced Scream's Wes Craven To Hire Her With A Persuasive Letter
Before Courteney Cox became synonymous with her "Friends" alter-ego — the neurotic perfectionist Monica Gellar — she was best known for her roles as Alex P. Keaton's (Michael J. Fox) girlfriend, Lauren, on "Family Ties," and Ace Ventura's love interest, Melissa, in "Ace Ventura: Pet Detective." But then "Friends" came along, and Cox embodied the character of Monica so completely that many fans began to assume that she must be similar to her character.
That image of Cox and Monica basically being the same person wasn't helped by an L.A. Times interview a year after "Friends" debuted, in which Cox admitted "Okay, I am a neat freak. Not about myself. I don't use a lint brush or anything, and I don't iron, but I could easily pick lint off of someone else." She went on to explain that it happened in an appearance on "The Jon Stewart Show" where she did exactly that, thinking to herself, "'Oh my God, I'm just like Monica. This is too scary.'"
As time passed, Cox was eager to try something different. On the "Behind the Scream" featurette of the "Scream" trilogy DVD, Cox talked about how she "wanted to play the part of Gale Weathers because she was just a total b****, and something (she) hadn't gotten to play in a while, being on "Friends" for so long." In her quest for the role, Cox even wrote director Wes Craven a persuasive letter.
She convinced him that she could play a b****
"I really had to do some persuading to get the part, because most people think of me as the studious type or I play a doctor, but they didn't really see me as a b****," Courteney Cox said. "So I had to try really hard to get this part." In her quest to make Wes Craven hire her for the role of ruthless newswoman Gale Weathers, Cox wrote him a letter, telling him "I know that you don't think of me as this person, but trust me, I really can be an absolute b****,'" she recalls to Variety.
Her lobbying obviously worked, and while we know others were in the running, such as Janeane Garofalo, who turned down the iconic horror movie role to star in "Sweethearts," Cox has now played the role for three decades. With longtime "Scream" survivor Neve Campbell opting out of the next film, fans are hanging on for dear life to Gale, the last one remaining from the original. But after the "Scream 6" trailer shows Ghostface attacking her, fans are worried that Gale won't live to see "Scream 7." As for Cox, whether she's doing comedy or horror, she feels she couldn't be doing any better. "There's just something about the confidence of time, of doing something so long, I probably love it more now than I ever have."