Scooby-Doo actor Matthew Lillard has shared his thoughts on why Hollywood is casting him in major projects again, not long after filmmaker Quentin Tarantino publicly criticised his work.
During an episode of The Bret Easton Ellis Podcast last year, Tarantino offered unfiltered takes on several performers.
Giving his opinion on the Scream star, Tarantino said: “I don’t care for Paul Dano, I don’t care for Owen Wilson, and I don’t care for Matthew Lillard.”
Lillard later addressed the remark, admitting it stung to hear an Oscar-winning director single him out by name.
“Quentin Tarantino this week said he didn’t like me as an actor. Eh, whatever. Who gives a s**t,” Deadline reported him saying at GalaxyCon in Ohio. He then added that ‘it hurts your feelings.’
“You wouldn’t say that to Tom Cruise. You wouldn’t say that to somebody who’s a top-line actor in Hollywood.”
Even so, Lillard—best known to many for playing Shaggy in the live-action Scooby-Doo films—recently explained that he believes changing audience tastes and industry nostalgia have helped drive his current run of work, after a quieter period.
“’Scooby-Doo’ one and two are more popular now than they ever were when they came out. So I do think there’s a weird nostalgia thing happening in our industry and in the zeitgeist because I think that people are longing for ye olde times,” Lillard said during an appearance on the Phase Hero podcast.
“I think that’s one of the reasons I’m having this moment to be honest, is because I was identified at that moment, so people are hiring me again.”
He also poked fun at himself, joking that he didn’t believe people ‘really liked him’ and that the new opportunities were more about audiences missing that earlier era.
Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed arrived in cinemas in 2004, but it struggled commercially.
Reflecting on that period, he told Business Insider: “I thought I’d be No. 1 on the call sheet for the next 10 years of movies,” the star told Business Insider. “And the reality was the exact opposite happened.”
By 2023, Lillard returned to a high-profile film role as William Afton in Five Nights at Freddy’s. Since then, his momentum has continued, including a notable appearance in Scream 7.
Next, he’s expected to appear in the TV series Carrie, alongside Narcos favourite Pedro Pascal.