Some legacies arrive wrapped in box sets, director’s commentaries, or midnight screenings. Others walk onto a set in Michigan, hand you a piece of direction so simple it feels absurd, and then change the way you work forever.
For Hayden Panettiere, Wes Craven was firmly in the second category.
More than ten years after Scream 4, she still carries his words — and his pace — with her everywhere she goes, as she revealed in a recent interview with Entertainment Weekly, last September.
“Move slow, or move slower.”
That was the director’s rule. His mantra. His spell.
When asked about the biggest piece of wisdom Craven passed along, Panettiere doesn’t hesitate:
“Memories of the timing of things. So, when you’re sitting, he would be like, ‘This is going to feel very slow. It’s gonna feel like you’re moving in slow motion, but when you put the music in and you edit it together, you have to build up that anticipation and you have to hit it right on the nail on the head. You can’t be a moment over. You gotta be right on the nose.’”
On set, it felt almost comically sluggish:
“‘Move slow, or move slower,’ and I would be like, ‘Geez, this feels like I’m moving at the pace of a snail.’ But watching it afterwards, after he put it together and edited everything, he was so right.”
If you’ve ever rewatched Kirby’s scenes frame by frame — and let’s be honest, if you’re here, you have — you can see that Craven timing. It’s the difference between a scare and the scare.
“He was so spectacular.”
Panettiere talks about Craven with a warmth that hits like a gut punch for every fan who still feels the void he left behind.
“I love the fact that I got to work with Wes Craven. He is amazing… he had an incredible impact on my life and on me as an actor, which I now utilize when I go into other projects.”
She goes further — because of course she does. Kirby Reed never half-committed to anything.
“He was so spectacular. I mean, he taught me also how to be on set. I would love to direct at some point in my life, and he was such a fabulous — his spirit, the person that he was, how kind he was. He really was an amazing example. He set an amazing example for how I would like to be as a director, as anybody on set, but as a director if I hopefully direct in the future.”
Then, with the kind of smirk only Kirby Reed can pull off:
“You don’t have to be an ass!”
A character that couldn’t be boxed in
Kirby Reed’s return in Scream 6 was a long-awaited victory lap for fans — and a personal one for Panettiere, who poured pieces of herself into the role back in 2011.
“I love that character. She is so powerful, and she is such a tomboy… I felt like I got to take the parts of me that people didn’t know existed and put them into her.”
And Kirby’s defiance of labels?
“You can’t really define her… She loves guys, she loves girls, she loves the world that she lives in. She is sassy.”
A character who refuses to shrink. A performer who refuses to flatten herself to fit anyone’s expectations. Craven saw that. Fans felt it. The franchise needed it.
With Scream 7 looming…
There’s no confirmation yet on whether Kirby steps into the next chapter. Back in September 2024, Production Weekly listed an Untitled Scream Spinoff focused on FBI Agent Kirby Reed, played by Hayden Panettiere. The project hasn’t resurfaced since.
Insiders suggest that she is not in Scream 7. At least… not in the film as we think of it.
Whispers still leave the door open — barely, but meaningfully — to the idea of a post-credits stinger.
So the real question becomes: Is Kirby absent? Or simply waiting for that heartbeat-long pause after the final blackout — the exact moment Wes Craven always taught his actors to hit “right on the nose”?
In Scream, absence has never meant silence.
