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Jenna Ortega is finally breaking her silence on the firing of her former costar.
In November, Melissa Barrera, who starred opposite Ortega in the fifth and sixth “Scream” films, was canned after voicing support for Palestinians amid the Israel-Gaza conflict.
Ortega is now sharing her thoughts on the matter for the first time.
“The business that we work in is so touchy-feely,” she told Vanity Fair in an interview published Tuesday. “Everybody wants to be politically correct, but I feel like, in doing that, we lose a lot of our humanity and integrity, because it lacks honesty.”
“I wish that we had a better sense of conversation,” Ortega continued. “Imagine if everyone could say what they felt and not be judged for it and, if anything, it sparked some sort of debate, not an argument.”
The actor then joked: “Am I describing world peace?”
Nina Westervelt/Variety/Getty Images
Just prior to her firing, Barrera had called Israel’s military campaign in Gaza a “genocide” on Instagram — a descriptor even a United Nations special rapporteur later deemed “reasonable” for the conflict.
“Gaza is currently being treated like a concentration camp,” Barrera wrote at the time. “Cornering everyone together, with no where to go, no electricity or water … People … are still silently watching it all happen. THIS IS GENOCIDE & ETHNIC CLEANSING.”
In explaining Barrera’s firing, production company Spyglass Media Group cited a zero-tolerance policy on antisemitism and “false references to genocide, ethnic cleansing, Holocaust distortion or anything that flagrantly crosses the line into hate speech.”
Barrera had spoken out against antisemitism herself in the weeks after the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel, however. The actor noted on Instagram at the time that she wanted Palestinians and Jews to be safe and hoped for the killing to end.
Ortega exited “Scream 7” a day after her colleague was fired, but sources told The Hollywood Reporter it had nothing to do with Barrera, and that Ortega merely had scheduling issues.
Barrera seems to have no regrets, meanwhile, and even argued her firing was a blessing.
“Honestly, I think I finally am becoming who I’m supposed to be in life, and the last few months have been a big awakening of that,” she told The Associated Press in January. “I’m just so grateful for everything that’s happened.”