Ariyela Wald-Cohain Talks Scary Movie 2026, Teyana Taylor, and Art the Clown [INTERVIEW]

Creating the costumes for a massive spoof movie is no easy task. Yet Ariyela Wald-Cohain rose to the occasion on Scary Movie (2026), combining new character looks with established IP spoofs. With over 1000 costumes made during the course of the movie, Wald-Cohain and her team had to push the limits of what could be allowed under parody rules, while still remaining true to the Scary Movie aesthetic. Wald-Cohain sat down with FandomWire to discuss her effort on the box office juggernaut.

Ariyela Wald-Cohain Interview with FandomWire

FandomWire: Thank you for speaking with FandomWire today about Scary Movie. The movie’s still dominating at the box office, still racking in money. I have to ask: you’re already an Emmy winner, and you’ve worked on other horror movies. How did you end up on Scary Movie?

Ariyela Wald-Cohain: A few years ago, I got to meet Marlon [Wayans] on A Haunted House. I did A Haunted House, A Haunted House 2, and 50 Shades of Black and Naked. Then I did the show, NBC Marlon on NBC. I worked with Mike Tiddes because he did most of those projects. When this, I heard this was happening, I reached out. I hadn’t worked with them on the last two movies, but the stars aligned, and I got to collaborate with them again.

FandomWire: What is different about designing for Scary Movie versus the Haunted House movies?

Ariyela Wald-Cohain: Well, the Haunted House movies are a spoof, but like Insidious. Mike really wanted to heighten the cinematic value of our movie here. We really took we took our horror characters very seriously and put all our efforts into the creativity behind them. We had to design them for today, but also bring back the nostalgic characters.

FandomWire: I was gonna ask you about that. Obviously, you’re bringing back Doofy, and then this version of Ghost Face. How do you blend that combination of trying to make it nostalgic, but also moving it forward in time?

Ariyela Wald-Cohain: So, with legal, we couldn’t copy exactly from the original Scary Movie. We needed to shift things a little bit. With Doofy, we’ve got his whole ensemble, and even all these patches. We had to redesign all the patches, so we evoked the look, but if you actually compare the patches, you’ll see they’re not the original patches.

I was playing around and thought, “How could we make Doofy in 2026? I had this idea of the body cam that everybody wears. The props people found this silly little camera that we’ve put on him. You obviously know who it is and that he really hasn’t changed in the last twenty years, but the world has evolved around him.

FandomWire: One of the other big things, obviously, you’re parodying dozens of iconic costumes. At what point do they loop you into into what kind of movies they’re looking to parody?

Ariyela Wald-Cohain: In the script, which changed like 10,000 times the week. A lot, they thought that I knew, were in the script. But I wasn’t familiar with some of the scenes. When we’re prepping, I must have had like 200 boards of references. I’m designing the characters, but I’m also trying to get the references right. So I have the boards of the references, the boards of the characters, and then where the character meets the reference.

I also wanted to make sense for the story, because I think, for horror to work, it really needs to be relatable. It needs to be real. You want the characters, even though they’re a little over the top, to feel authentic to who we knew. It was a lot of puzzle pieces.

FandomWire: You especially see that with Shorty. That is very much the character we’ve always loved, but he is in a different stage of life. What’s the most difficult part about actually selling the comedy through costume as part of storytelling?

Ariyela Wald-Cohain: It starts in the writing and then building the character. If you have the character right, then you know the joke comes. For instance, Ray, when he’s wearing his giddy-up at the party, you know, the reference to Brokeback Mountain. I think that if it works for the character, even though he was wearing a costume, it will still feel like Ray would wear that costume at the Halloween party. If it feels real, then the joke lands better.

Sometimes I will contribute my ideas. I really love Shorty’s outfit, the Gucci Weed tracksuit. I had this idea of doing all these patches, and there were 450 embroidered patches sewn on to that by hand. When I showed him that idea originally, I wasn’t sure that he would love it. Of course, he arrived like the day before we start shooting, so we showed him the idea, but then we ended up gluing them. On the day I was actually running with a glue gun just because there was no time to perfect it.

If there are specific things written in the script, then I have to go buy them. There were a lot of scenes that we designed, and they didn’t make it to the end because the comedy didn’t work. It really is a collaboration between the writers. They also come up with things last minute, which I need to figure out.

The Michael Jackson scene, we didn’t have Keenan until two days before. We didn’t even know who it was, and he needed this Michael Jackson outfit. And we needed a stunt double. It was like, “How can we pull this together?” Then they told me there’s an alpaca in the scene, so I said, “Wouldn’t it be funny if we dressed the alpaca in the red, ‘Thriller’ jacket?” They’re like, “That’s hilarious.” Now we needed to build a thing for an alpaca, which I’ve never dressed in alpaca before. But it was fun.

FandomWire: You did mention things will change on the day of, because of improv and comedy can find something great on the day of. Was there any moment that stands out where the costuming changed because of a joke on the day of?

Ariyela Wald-Cohain: Not so much on the day of, but the opening scene with Teyana, we did that in a reshoot. When I heard it was Tiana Taylor, Mike and I were like, “Okay, we can’t just put on a regular yellow dress on her.” I mean, it’s Teyana Taylor. There was a whole joke “my abs have abs,” and that was in the script originally. There was a scene where she opens up the dress to show her abs. I came up with designs, and we kept feeling it was too much. It would just take away from the joke.

I ended up saying, why don’t we just do a dress that shows her abs from the beginning. Mike and I worked on this design, and that’s what I ended up doing. They changed the script; we didn’t do a reveal, but it was just there from the beginning. I’m sure 1000 things just happened in the moment, but yeah, I can’t think off the top of my head now.

FandomWire: You have that scene on the subway where you’re bringing to life a dozen horror icons. Which one were you most excited to bring to life for that sequence?

Ariyela Wald-Cohain: The script just mentioned one or two or three. They came to me and asked, “What do you think you can do with the time we have?” We needed to send legal a sketch of what I was thinking, what pieces I bought, then I had to put it on the background person, and then they came back with notes of what we needed to change. Because of the 30% of legal changing, each character went through that, and all the characters in the background of the big party at the house. All those costumes, we designed and cleared.

I was excited to do the Heart Eyes, just because of the coolness of the mask. Dia Scott, did a beautiful job building a lot of these masks, aging, redoing, and painting. We did a funny fitting for Megan. The actress is a dancer and she was phenomenal. She came in, put the dress on. I asked, “Can you move?” I knew she needed to flip. She started dancing, and was amazing. She brought it to life.

If you look at the real costume compared to what we did, it’s very different. A lot of ideas are the same, but my seams just made this amazing bow out of all these fabrics. We put a lot of detail into it to make it different, but make it our own. And the way she brought it to life was just so amazing. It was a beautiful collaboration between an actor who needs to do so many stunts and dance. Visually, that was an amazing scene, and the DP did such a good job with the lighting.

FandomWire: You also got Art the Clown to show up for a scene. How did that collaboration come about?

Ariyela Wald-Cohain: So yeah, I needed to spoof, so we needed many, many, many multiples of that outfit. It was getting bloodied. I actually spent a whole weekend aging all those outfits by myself, because I felt that they looked too new. I did all the blood spatter myself one weekend, just outside with the trailer and just doing it all.

Then we had the other Santa Claus that needed to look like a different version of him. When you think of Santa Claus, their costumes are kind of basic. So I really tried with the different colors and textures to make them visually different. It was a really fun thing. I think one of the producers of Terrifier was there in the background. He was one of the background actors standing with the kids. It was kind of like a little Easter egg. I don’t even know how that happened, but somehow it happened.

FandomWire: That’s awesome! Out of all the costumes and all the characters that you designed for Scary Movie (it’s got to be in the hundreds), was there one specific character that you had the most fun designing?

Ariyela Wald-Cohain: There were close to 1000 costumes, actually, but who’s counting? I think my favorite was the Shorty’s tracksuit, the “Weed Tracksuit.” And honestly, Tiana’s dress. It was a miraculous dress that she did so much justice. For Ghost Face, we spent a lot of time dealing with the texture of the fabric to have a little bit of shine, the logistics of the hood not falling off, and the sleeves staying where they needed to be. I put a lot of effort into it to make it more visually interesting.

FandomWire: What do you have coming up next?

Ariyela Wald-Cohain: I just did a pickup for the Day of the Dead movie, which was actually really fun. Things are picking up in Hollywood, which is very helpful. I hope I get to do another movie with Marlon and Mike, and I’m not really sure what that is yet. I had a blast and I’m willing to do that again.

Scary Movie is in theaters now.