Freddie Prinze Jr. explains why he was “so angry” when asked to take a pay cut for the Scooby-Doo sequel so the co-stars could get a raise

Freddie Prinze Jr. felt “so angry” when asked to take a pay cut Scooby Doo 2: Unleashed Monsters so his co-stars could get a raise.

Prinze Jr. starred alongside his wife Sarah Michelle Gellar (Daphne), Linda Cardellini (Velma) and Matthew Lillard (Shaggy) as Fred in the two Scooby-Doo live-action films from the early noughties.

In a recent interview with esquire, Prinze Jr. explained why he was so upset when asked to take a pay cut in the sequel.

“I remember thinking, ‘Wait a minute, who’s giving them the raise? Me or all of you?’ Like we made you three quarters of a billion dollars, can’t you afford to pay them what I’m making? Fuck it,” he said.

Prinze Jr. also claimed that the studio behind the film gave his salary to a magazine to get him to comply. The Independent has reached out to Warner Bros. for comment.

“My ego was so angry,” he recalled, adding that he knew then that he was done with the franchise.

Despite this, the actor is now proud of the legacy the films have created.

“All these people who grew up with this love [Scooby-Doo] Movies started coming in… and then I felt like I got a better perspective on what that movie meant to people because I wasn’t looking at it through the studio lenses anymore,” he said.

Last month the release of the latest iteration of the Scooby-Doo universe Trick or Treat Scooby-Doo! canonized Velma with an attraction to women — something that has long been hinted at but never directly addressed as part of her story.

In response, Cardellini said she thinks it’s “great” that Velma’s sexuality is finally being widely recognized.

James Gunn, who wrote the live-action films, shared in 2020 that he had tried to make Velma a visible lesbian in these films, “but the studio kept watering it down and watering it down and becoming ambiguous (the filmed version ), then nothing (the released version) and finally having a boyfriend (the sequel)”.

Alongside this version of Velma, the famous bespectacled character will have her own HBO Max spin-off series in 2023 – this time portrayed as a South Asian and voiced by Mindy Kaling.