Full spoilers follow for Chucky Season 3, Episodes 1-4.
Season 3 of Syfy’s Chucky series is in the bag.
The truncated run of four episodes was cut short due to the double whammy of writers and actors strikes that put the kibosh on production, so as we await the back half of episodes, we spoke with Chucky creator Don Mancini about the doll’s dealings in the White House, the cast of victims new and old, the shocking celebrity cameos and, of course, the kills.
Don Mancini is the rare horror auteur who has stuck with his creation throughout the decades. He wrote or co-wrote all seven films in the franchise and spearheaded his current cable outing, all the while using Chucky as an expression of his inner feelings.
“You have to ground this stuff in something identifiable,” Mancini tells IGN. “It has to be about something. It can't just be a doll saying ‘Fuck’ and knifing people because that would get old.”
In 1988, he was a reflection of his creator’s disdain for commercialized kids toys like Cabbage Patch Kids and My Buddy dolls. As the series progressed, Mancini began exploring queer themes that reflected the alienation he felt growing up as a gay kid facing abuse from his father. Now, 35 years after his creation, Chucky is starting to get old. Literally.
“I had a big birthday this year,” laughs Mancini. “I turned 60 this year, and it's an ugly number. Yes, absolutely, I think thoughts of aging, mortality, creeping irrelevance, all of that comes to haunt one. So why not use it in the show? Gives it some resonance. … His decrepitude does advance as we continue on in the back half of the season. And old Chucky is very disturbing, very disturbing.”
Chucky: Home Is Where the (Bloody) Heart Is
Aging is never easy, but friends, family, and familiar faces can make the inexorable march of time that much more bearable. Throughout Chucky’s existence, the series evolved a defiant, self-aware and kitschy sensibility a la the works of John Waters. And just like the famed director of filth, Mancini has similarly cultivated a tight-knit cast of talented actors to serve as the doll’s companions and cannon fodder – and sometimes both.
“The repertory company of actors, that's something I've been doing for a while. It's just something that's a lot of fun to do,” says Mancini. “But one of the reasons I like to do that is that it's fun to write roles for actors that you know, because then when you get to know them as performers, as well as people and friends, it is just more fun. And I think the actors enjoy it too.
Michael Therriault’s first appearance in the series was in Cult of Chucky as Nica's evil psychiatrist. He went on to play Lexy's dad in Season 1 of the show, and now he's back in Season 3 as the Vice President. Lara Jean Chorostecki played the evil nun Sister Ruth in Season 2, and this year she's playing the First Lady.
An actor like Devon Sawa can play a set of twins, a doomed priest, and even the most Canadian U.S. President of all time, but some roles are a little more set in stone. Brad Dourif is still the iconic voice of Chucky, Alex Vincent is his arch-nemesis Andy, and Jennifer Tilly is still Tiffany… Except when she’s pretending to be Jennifer Tilly. After seven movies and three seasons of a TV show, even the main players get an opportunity to experiment within the show’s twisted sensibility.
“We've done it starting with Jennifer Tilly,” says Mancini. “Because Jennifer in Seed played Tiffany and Jennifer, and she continues that throughout the franchise, including the TV series. She's often playing... It's Tiffany pretending to be Jennifer, pretending to be... It can get very interesting and complex. And even with Brad [Dourif] last year, giving him variations to play on the Chucky persona with Good Chucky and Colonel Chucky, etc. … It's fun to do that, to just think like, ‘Oh, what new can I give this performer to do that they've never done before?’ And I think that keeps all of us on our toes, and I think hopefully the viewers as well.”
Killing Celebrities
Other familiar faces don’t survive for very long, but brutally killing off celebrities in surprising cameos has become a beloved tradition for fans of the series. It’s all in good fun, of course, reminiscent of the ’60s Batman TV series where stars champed at the bit for a chance to stick their head out a skyscraper window and crack-wise with the dynamic duo. Chucky’s cameos are a wee more gruesome – but just as entertaining.
“Sarah Sherman having played Chucky in that [SNL] skit from a couple of seasons ago with Jake Gyllenhaal [was] hilarious, and that's when I first got in touch with her,” recalls Mancini of how the actress wound up playing an eccentric White House nanny.
And then there’s Kenan Thompson who showed up as a New York City cabbie.
“When we were in New York last year for Comic-Con, Keenan threw us a party because he's such a fan,” says the Chucky creator. “He threw us a Chucky party to watch Episode 1. That was the first time I met him. And I'm as big a fan of his, if not more than he is of Chucky. And he said, ‘Well, hey, do you want to come to the [SNL] show this Saturday?’ ‘Fuck yes, I do.’ So I went and I'm basically meeting all of these people like, ‘Hey, do you want to be on Chucky?’ So who knows who you might see next year?”
Thompson and Sherman clearly relished the madcap campiness of modern Chucky, but even their excellent performances and horrific deaths were eclipsed by the season’s most surprising cameo: My Big Fat Greek Wedding’s Nia Vardalos, who plays a prison chef who makes herself into a meal.
“They're both bonafide Chucky fans and horror fans and so both of them were pretty familiar with all of our mythology,” says Mancini of Thompson and Sherman. “Then Nia Vardalos, a little bit less so – perhaps not surprisingly given that she's the queen of the rom-com genre, which is I think one of the reasons she wanted to do it. Because she said, ‘Nobody ever thinks of me for this stuff.’ But I said, ‘Well, we have. Come and join us.’ And she was really excited about doing all of that physical comedy. It's a very Bruce Campbell-type of sequence, her death scene.”
With at least another half a season on the horizon, there are plenty of opportunities for Hollywood’s best and brightest to show up for some slaughter. Mancini can’t reveal any confirmed upcoming cameos, but he does have some longshot dream candidates.
“Martin Short. Catherine O'Hara. I mean, having raided the SNL ranks, maybe now we can move on to the Canadian SCTV ranks,” he laughs. “But I'm a huge fan of sketch comedy, obviously. And I'm a huge fan... I love Martin Short. I have no idea if he even knows who Chucky is. Janelle Monáe is a huge Chucky fan, and we reached out to her but didn't hear back, so I don't know. These people are busy, obviously. If the vibe seems right and they seem like a good fit, I'm totally down.”
Bringing a Puppet to Murderous Life
Chucky’s journey from the big screen to direct-to-DVD and finally cable television hasn’t diminished him in the slightest. The legendary animatronics that brought him to life in 1988 have evolved with the help of new technology and keyed-out puppeteers that give the killer doll a frightening amount of freedom.
“I rarely feel constricted in any way,” says Mancini of the process. “The only thing that kind of requires a long-term logistical battle plan is whenever Chucky walks through space. And even that has gotten simpler, but that does require all hands on deck, and it can be a complicated mission, but it is much easier than it used to be.”
He notes how for the past decade, starting with Curse of Chucky, the puppetry has advanced quite a bit.
“We don’t have to build the sets six feet off the stage floor anymore, which is what we always had to do and the puppeteers would be underneath,” he says. “Now because we can paint them out, we can keep the sets on the stage floor, and it's just much easier in all kinds of ways. I mean, it's just easier to communicate with people when you can see them rather than them being under the set. … We plan out in advance. We dole out a few such shots in each episode to give the impression that this is an ambulatory, living creature that moves through space. And then just by doing that two or three times per episode, that's enough to sell it.”
On top of the already arduous task of convincingly bringing a child’s plaything to life, the show doesn’t skimp on the splatter. The gore of Chucky is so outrageous and over the top that it requires an entirely separate budget.
“There is a separate budget for the puppets,” says Mancini. “There is a special budget for practical gore effects, and it's François Dagenais who's been doing that for us on the show and who's phenomenal. He had worked on Hannibal, he had worked on Channel Zero... And among other things, he designed the Tooth Child. We're always challenging ourselves and one another to raise the bar, and we like to keep the kills and the gore creative. Also on the show, we like to keep it kind of stylized and incongruously beautiful in a certain way.”
Chucky has been around for a pretty long time, and while he never really went away, long gaps between productions meant that every new film was essentially starting from square one. But the franchise’s new home on TV keeps the cast and crew as sharp as Chucky’s implements of destruction.
“One of the things that we're finding, and this makes sense, is that with the show – and this applies to everyone, not just the puppeteers, it's the writers, the directors – everyone's in shape because we're doing it continuously every year, every few months for the last three years,” says Mancini. “Whereas before with the movies, we'd do a movie and then we're down for a few years and then you come back. But now it's like tennis players. Everyone's in shape, and I think that that translates to the screen in all kinds of ways.”
Season 3 of Chucky will return when the work stoppages end. Beyond that, only time will tell, but even though he’s getting a little long in the tooth, it will be a long time before this puppet is put to pasture.
