David Arquette Says When Daughter Coco Finally Watched Her Parents in Scream, She Thought It Was ‘Weird’

Coco’s dad and mom, Courteney Cox, both star in the horror franchise

David Arquette and Courteney Cox might be two of horror’s biggest stars — but their daughter Coco Arquette doesn’t necessarily care.

Arquette, 53, appeared at 90s Con in Hartford, Conn., on Sunday, March 30, alongside his Scream castmates Jamie Kennedy, Matthew Lillard, Dermot Mulroney and Skeet Ulrich to talk about the franchise’s impact and legacy during a Q&A moderated by PEOPLE’s Breanne L. Heldman.

A fan asked the actors if their kids have seen the movies and what they thought of them. “I tried to watch Scream with Coco during COVID,” Arquette, who played Dewey Riley in the first five Scream films, said with a laugh. “She’s like, ‘Dad, this is just weird.’ ”

“I was like, ‘I know,’ ” he continued. But things changed a little when the fifth Scream movie was released in 2022; it was the first since 2011’s Scream 4. “She went to one of the screenings and she saw all the fan response and she just was sweet. She was like, ‘Aww, they love you guys,’ ” Arquette said of Coco, 20.

In the films, Arquette has an on-again, off-again relationship with Cox’s character, news reporter-turned-author Gale Weathers. In the movies, they eventually marry, but in 2022’s Scream, fans learned they had split.

In real life, Arquette and Cox married in 1999 after first connecting on the set of Scream. Coco, their only child, was born in 2004. They divorced in 2013, but remain friends. Coco, meanwhile, accompanied her mom to the premiere of 2023’s Scream VI.

During Sunday’s panel, Arquette also remembered filming a pivotal scene — one that sparked the romance between Gale and Dewey — during the first movie, released in 1996 and directed by the late Wes Craven. In the scene, the duo end up on the ground, and Gale says, “Is this what you’re looking for?”

Craven, Arquette remembered, gave him “the sweetest direction.” He told him, “You’re going to look at her like you’ve been searching for this woman your whole life.” He said that was his “favorite thing” he remembered about making the movies. 

Elsewhere in the panel, Mulroney, 61, said that when he got the call asking him to join 2023’s Scream VI, the first thing he asked his agent was, “Do I get work with Arquette?” His agent told him he had “some good news and some bad news.” 

“He told me the number that they were paying me, and then they told me that he was dead,” Mulroney said. Arquette’s Dewey is finally killed by Ghostface in the fifth film — though earlier this month it was reported that Arquette will appear in the seventh film, which will be released next year. Cox previously advocated for his return to the franchise.

Cox will also return for Scream 7 alongside Neve Campbell, Mason Gooding and Jasmin Savoy Brown. Melissa Barrera was fired from the film because of her social media posts about Palestine, and Jenna Ortega, who played her on-screen sister, dropped out soon after.

Lillard, 55, will return for Scream 7 — even though his character, Stu Macher, one of the original Ghostface killers, died at the end of the first movie. At 90s Con, Lillard said he was “slightly terrified to be back because all I can do is really screw up a legacy that we have.”

“I could really suck, and so that’s my fear,” he continued. “My fear is that I come back and sort of punish something that I could never have touched and been just fine. I hope I don’t f it up for everyone.”

Meanwhile, Ulrich’s Billy Loomis appeared both 2022’s Scream and 2023’s Scream VI as a hallucination. During Sunday’s panel, Kennedy, who played Ghostface victim Randy Meeks in the first two movies, joked that he was the only dead character who didn’t get to come back.