Matthew Lillard

Despite its appearance, the article on scream kings on Wikipedia is not a single editor’s labour of love. Though reading the edit history makes it clear, to me at least, that someone was calling women “females” on the internet again. It reads, however, as though the title “scream king” is less well defined than that of “scream queen.” The article suggests such people as Robert Englund and Vincent Price as scream kings, and both of those are known for playing villains. Matthew Lillard has played the villain, but he’s also been, well, Shaggy.

Matthew Lillard looks like the kind of guy who got his start doing a show about skaters for Nickelodeon. Featuring a very young Tony Hawk, even. No shade, here; that’s just what he looks like. Horror movies almost immediately started taking advantage of that fact. Oh, his first real role, in Serial Mom, is in more of a comedy or horror-comedy, but even if I’m not sure whether a couple of the next few movies he did were horror or not, Scream came two years later and cemented his role in the genre. A lot of the other movies that followed were also horror.

In 2002, he was cast as the live-action Shaggy Rogers. If being in Scream cemented his place in the horror movie pantheon, becoming Shaggy launched him even higher. Especially when Casey Kasem retired and Lillard took over the role in the animated version as well. A lot of what he’s done since then has been, as I’m sure he’d agree, stunt-casting. Not everything has been horror or horror-adjacent, but casting Lillard in a minor role is a good way to get the audience to express recognition.

Lillard is not a bad actor, and I certainly don’t intend to imply that he is. Oh, I’m not interested in most of his career, but he’s more than just The Guy Who Plays Shaggy. Now, he says that he recognized while making Hackers that Angelina Jolie was going to be a star and he was going to be the guy who’s fourth-billed, and I’ll definitely say that he’s a Stay In His Lane actor. He studied Shakespeare at the now-defunct LA campus of the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, and I’ve actually seen him in it—but in one of the comedies, the Brannagh Love’s Labours Lost. Just because he was good in Twin Peaks: The Return, it doesn’t mean I want to see him as King Lear, you know?

Actually, the role I’ve seen him in that surprised me most was also a surprise to him. He’s very clear that he auditioned for The Descendants and about as clear that he wasn’t expecting to get the role. I saw it in the theatre, and when Lillard is revealed as the person George Clooney’s wife was cheating on him with, the friend I saw it with and I were equally surprised. Lillard agrees—the odds that anyone leaves George Clooney for him are slim at best. It’s not even as though he didn’t do a good job in the role. It’s just, you know, you figure anyone who can get George Clooney would not turn to Matthew Lillard.