Melissa Barrera says Titanique has given her a reset after nearly a year in which she said she barely got any offers, a stretch that followed her firing from the Scream franchise. The new production opened this month after years off-Broadway, with Barrera now playing Rose in the Titanic parody narrated by Celine Dion.
For Barrera, the timing matters. Her career has already begun to rebound with roles in Abigail and The Copenhagen Test, but she said the stage show lets her emerge “triumphant and anew” from a controversy that could have ended her career. She also said, “It is a reset, and a great one.”
Titanique leans hard into that kind of reinvention. The show is built as a broad parody with pop culture jokes and material tailored to whoever is onstage, and Barrera said that is part of what makes it work. “Oh, she probably doesn’t have work, she’ll say yes to anything,” she said of the spirit behind the comedy. Later in the show, Parsons gets “a decent Big Bang Theory line,” while Deborah Cox riffs on “Nobody’s Supposed To Be Here.”
That flexibility sits alongside a cast built for name recognition and punchlines. Marla Mindelle plays Celine Dion, Jim Parsons plays Mrs. Bukater, Rose’s mother, Deborah Cox plays the Unsinkable Molly Brown and Frankie Grande plays Victor Garber. The production had already spent years off-Broadway before making the leap this month, turning a cult favorite into a more visible showcase at a moment when Barrera’s own trajectory is back in motion.
The backdrop, though, remains impossible to ignore: Barrera was fired from Scream after describing Israel’s actions in Gaza as genocide and ethnic cleansing. That history shadows the new run, but the show’s reception suggests a cleaner conclusion than the one many would have written for her career a year ago. In Titanique, Barrera is not just returning — she is arriving with a part that lets the audience see exactly how much ground she has already regained.
