This week I sat down with Joseph Whipp, who played Sheriff Burke in the original Scream and Sergeant Parker in A Nightmare on Elm Street, and I realized pretty quickly how much of his story I had never heard.
Long before Scream, Joseph was a high school drama teacher in Northern California and spent two and a half years playing Randall P. McMurphy in a San Francisco production of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest before Jack Nicholson took the role to the screen. We get into those early theater years, old-school Hollywood, working with Wes Craven, Cheers, The Golden Girls, Sean Connery, Karl Malden, Paul Sorvino, Johnny Depp and a completely different era of being a working actor.
We also go back through Scream, why Sheriff Burke was never actually killed, why Joseph still thinks they could have brought him back, the insanity of the horror convention circuit, and his ongoing plan for the inevitable Scream 59.
I’ve known Joseph for years from the Scream convention world, but I genuinely got to know him during this conversation. At 85, he’s still hilarious, sharp, full of stories and has more than five decades of Hollywood history behind him.
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About Joseph Whipp:
Joseph Whipp is an actor whose career spans more than five decades. He is best known to horror fans as Sheriff Burke in Scream and Sergeant Parker in A Nightmare on Elm Street. His credits also include Escape from Alcatraz, Cheers, The Golden Girls, Generations, Death Spa, The Hidden and Wrong Is Right. Before his screen career, Joseph taught drama at Carlmont High School and spent two and a half years performing Randall P. McMurphy in a San Francisco production of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.
Follo Joseph Whipp:
Website: josephdwhipp.com
Instagram: @josephdwhipp
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TIMESTAMPS:
00:00:00 – The Scream 59 Origin Story
00:07:57 – From San Francisco to Venice Beach
00:17:50 – Playing McMurphy Before Jack Nicholson
00:28:00 – Sheriff Burke Never Got Killed
00:41:00 – The Biggest Scream Convention Jamie Ever Did
00:49:50 – Hollywood in the ’80s & Creative Friction
00:57:00 – The Cheers Audition With One Hour’s Notice
01:10:00 – Johnny Depp, Wes Craven & Betty White
01:23:00 – Wild Stories From the Horror Convention Circuit
01:33:00 – The Scream Family & Scream 59
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