By Emily Maskell

Copyright thepinknews

Scream star Matthew Lillard has voiced his opinion on the fan theory regarding the characters Stu and Billy.

Lillard, who played Stu Macher in the 1996 horror film, was joined on stage recently at Silver Screen Con by Scream co-stars Skeet Ulrich, who played Billy Loomis, and Rose McGowan (Tatum Riley).

The film was first in the slasher series and followed high school friends who became targets of a costumed serial killer known as Ghostface

While talking about the legacy of the film, they were asked about the theory which suggests that best friends Billy and Stu were actually lovers. The two stars then began petting each other and Lillard even leaned over and twisted Ulrich’s nipple.

“I feel maybe that’s a motive in Tatum’s death,” McGowan said, prompting cheers from the audience. “Deep subplot that maybe they weren’t even aware of.”

But Lillard replied: “Maybe we were totally aware. We are the first husbands of horror. The reason I love it is because there’s a lot of hatred in the world right now.

‘We are the first gay couple in the horror movie’

“I love standing up and saying we are the first gay couple ever in the horror movie and there’s nothing they can f**king say about it. You can’t touch it, you can’t take it away. So, if there’s a little gay kid out there going, ‘Oh my god’, we see you, we love you.”

In the comments below a TikTok that captured Lillard’s speech, many people have praised the actor – still probably best-known as Shaggy from the Scooby-Doo universe.

“Matthew Lillard is everything” one person wrote, while another said: “Protect Matthew at all costs.” Someone else declared: “Just when you couldn’t think you could love these men even more…”

Scream has been considered queer-coded for some time, with Billy and Stu loosely based on infamous early-20th-century murderers Leopold and Loeb, both of whom told the press that they were in a homosexual relationship.

Screenwriter Kevin Williamson, himself a gay man, told PrideSource: “It’s very sort of homoerotic, in the sense that there were these two guys [who] killed this other person just to see if they could get away with it. If you Google Leopold and Loeb, you’ll read about it and you’ll get, OK, that’s Billy and Stu.”

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