Exclusive Interview with Scream’s Connor Weil
Connor Weil plays Will Belmont on MTV’s hit summer show Scream, the troubled jock with some type of secret. Connor and the cast have quickly gained a lot popularity! Every week the episode ends leaving viewers on the edge of their seats. I was fortunate enough to get the chance to chat with Connor about all things Scream, surfing and even humanitarian work. Here’s what he had to say:
I was reading in a different interview of yours that you love doing humanitarian work; it’s so nice to hear that! How do you get involved in stuff like that, what was your last project?
“Great question! I actually had a friend who was in this program that I was part of; it was called Courts for Kids. I worked on a few projects with them a couple of years ago. The first one was in India and the second was in Samoa, which is like out in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. The program builds basketball courts for communities who may need them. Whether that’s an orphanage or like a neighborhood, whoever needs it. We build them for the kids to exercise on, like a concrete place for them to have level ground.
The last place I went was Samoa and it was amazing! I mean when you’re there you just conform to the culture. They cook for you and you get to see everything. You can do tours of their islands and everything. It was so incredible! It took three to four days of hard work to get the concrete laid and all that. After that you get to really live in the culture and it’s incredible.
It’s hard to leave LA everything’s here I get that. But, if you want to travel you should just do it! It doesn’t matter what you’re doing. If it’s humanitarian work then great, or if you just want to go see things, that’s great as well. A lot of the places I’ve traveld to have poverty-stricken people, but they’re still just so happy and so thankful. It’s really cool.”
Obviously you’re like completely opposite to your character Will. What made you want to play him? Did you originally audition for a different character?
“I actually auditioned for Noah’s role first. It was super fun and then they called me back in to play Will. My whole thing was that I’ve played a lot of jocks and a lot of jerks, and a lot of them are pretty one noted. They’re the, excuse my language, douchebag stereotypical jerk. Will definitely has that, but the thing about Will is he has a lot more layers to him. Yeah, he’s a jerk, he has that energy, but he really does care for his girlfriend. He really does want to do well, he wants to succeed, he wants to get the scholarship, he wants to make his dad proud. There’s so much going on underneath that you want to explore.”
I noticed that with pretty much every character, everyone seems to have more than one side and something else going on.
“That’s our favorite part about doing this as a TV series rather than a movie. We have 10 hours instead of two-three to really stretch the characters and show you the different levels of stereotypes. We start off with the stereotypes and then we morph them into something else. I think it’s really awesome.”
Do you think you have any similarities with Will?
“I find myself being similar in his drive. He has that drive and passion of “this is what I want and this is what I’m going to do to get it”. I really feed off of that part of him. I really relate to that.”
Right now, Teen Wolf and Scream are probably neck and neck for my favorite summer shows, what’s on your list this summer?
“First of all thanks! I just powered through Game of Thrones. I think as a cast we’re all deeply obsessed with that show. As we were shooting we would gather Sunday nights (those who were caught up) and watch the new GoT episode. I’m really itching for the new season already. Besides that, and you know Scream obviously, I’m mostly playing catch up. I just finished Sons of Anarchy, which was amazing.”
I’ve seen you talk about surfing before and I know there’s not much of that in Louisiana, now that you’re back in Los Angeles I’m assuming, are you going to get back into it or do you have more acting projects lined up?
“Definitely surfing when I can. That’s definitely my happy place! I can just shut out the world for a second and be closer to nature. As far as summer goes, there’s a couple things lined up that are still too early in pre-production to talk about, but there’s definitely stuff out there that I want to be a part of that I’m chasing down. It’s coming together now that we’re all back and settled.”
I talked to Tom [Maden] recently and we discussed the original movies, specifically Billy and Stu and their relationship. Playing Will and Jake do you think you guys drew some inspiration from them?
“That’s another great question. I think I speak for everyone when I say we kind of do a combination of both. We watched the movies as a cast to see where it started, but we also wanted a newer kind of darker twist for this generation thing. I would say that there’s parts where we have throwbacks, where it’s like obvious you can see “Billy and Stu” standing there talking. But, we also draw it from our own stuff.”
I also noticed how every week there’s a reference to something. I’ve caught like three Hannibal references, and that awesome Pretty Little Liars one last night as well.
“Yeah they’re hilarious right? The writers have done such an amazing job of keeping it current. With everything from Hannibal to PLL to Game of Thrones, it’s fun!”
I think the whole modernized thing makes it even more scary. The internet is already scary and then you add a serial killer on top of that and then on top of THAT you add in high school! It’s terrifying.
“Seriously! High School is one of the most influential times of your life and we’re going to throw in a killer [laughs]. That was bold of the writers to do that. To send that message to you know be careful what you do on the Internet. It’s kind of a cautionary tale in some way, but it’s also kind of fun just to scare people like that like “oh watch your Twitter account you never know who’s watching!”
You guys are all so young, I think it’s nice to see young people out there doing things, was it scary coming onto a cast of mostly newcomers?
“We quickly found out that everyone was awesome. From like the first day we looked around and we knew we were all set. The first table read we all had our pens and pencils and we were marking up our scripts and playing off of each other! It really worked. Everyone was on the same page. It was very clear how well things were going to go from the start.”
You’re SO good at Twitter, I’ve seen you reply and favorite and retweet almost everything that comes to you, I don’t know how you do it. Do you like interacting with fans of the show?
“I LOVE interacting with fans. I’ve never really been active on Twitter so it’s new. It’s fun to throw out teasers and such. I do love connecting with people and being able to talk to fans to let them know we’re all the same ! You know, we put our pants on one leg at a time [laughs]. This is the career I’ve chosen, bur you’re equally as talented in your own way. It’s cool to see everyone excited.”
I saw you all at comic con was this your first time going?
“Yeah that was my first time. My first year ever and it was CRAZY. We were on the bus going to our first panel together! I looked down and it’s so funny seeing all the people in costumes. One of the cast members turns to me and goes “you’re the weird one because you’re not in costume.” [Laughs]. My mind was blown! It was such a funny moment. We actually wanted to cosplay as like Game of Thrones characters or Star Wars. We had this whole plan that we wanted to dress up as something together, but we couldn’t do it this year. Maybe next time. That would be so much fun to like throw on a Scream mask or something and just walk by and photo bomb people.”
On the subject of fans, do you like reading the fan theories about the show; I know people can come up with some really creative things? Is it hard for you to not spoil people every week?
“Oh absolutely! I encourage the fans! I’m like bring on the theories, let me know what you’re thinking. This is the first time we’ve really seen all the episodes cut and edited together so when the fans start cranking out the theories we’re like “whoa that’s really smart”. I encourage it 100%. It’s hard to not spoil stuff because I get so excited remembering shooting certain scenes. I have to like get off of Twitter to let people enjoy it [laughs]. I get a lot of questions on Twitter asking me like what happens and I have the same answer every time, “you just have to wait and see”.”
Bella Thorne’s character Nina was the first to go, if you guys were all in this scenario for real, who from the cast do you think would survive the longest?
“I would say Bex. She’s so quick-witted about that stuff that she would be like ON IT. She would know where the killer was going next.”
Tom had mentioned that one of his favorite scenes coming up was a fight between Jake and Will. What was it like filming that scene?
“That’s one of the scenes that I’m really excited to see how it turns out. We have such great chemistry! We really connected so we were able to work off of each other to try to see the best way to let that play out. We had the best time staging that. It was cool to use all those props and makeup like the mouthful of blood. It was a lot of fun. I hope you guys have as much fun watching it as we did filming it.”
What has been your favorite part about working on the show?
“My answer never changes. It’s working with the cast members, and the crew. Everyone really cares about the project. Like “you want to go sit in makeup for four hours?” and people are down because they respect it and care about it that much. Having everyone excited to work makes the atmosphere on set great, and the outcome even better. It’s such cool group of people to work with. We all watched the episode together last night. Everyone’s rapport is so great. It’s the best!”
Make sure to tune into Scream on MTV Tuesday’s at 10pm!