Interviews
Jennifer Tilly Promises “Chucky” Season Three: Part Two is “Batshit Crazy” [Interview]
The first half of “Chucky” Season 3 ended with the massive bombshell that the serial killer’s Good Guy doll body is rapidly aging, putting him on the fast track toward death. Chucky wasn’t the only killer receiving bad news. Tiffany Valentine, inhabiting the body of Jennifer Tilly, also finds herself on Death Row with time running out.
USA and SYFY’s hit horror series “Chucky” is coming back to the small screen for “Season 3: Part 2” on April 10.
Ahead of the second half’s debut next week, Bloody Disgusting spoke with Jennifer Tilly about Tiffany’s impeccable sense of style, no matter the circumstances, and what kind of madness is in store as season three winds down. For starters, while Season 3: Part 2 might put Tiffany behind bars, don’t expect a drab prison uniform for the murderess.
Jennifer Tilly said of Tiffany’s extravagant prison life, “Well when I got the script, I said, ‘Oh.’ Because I usually do a lot of my own costumes. I looked at the script, and I was like, ‘This is going to be really relaxing.’ I basically have courtroom outfits, and in the script, it said, ‘a very demure suit.’ And then, for most of the rest of the show, I’m in a uniform. That’ll be pretty easy. I mean boring. So, I got there without any suitcases, and then Don Mancini goes, ‘No, no, no, no! This is Tiffany,’ he said, ‘we want her to be glamorous at all times. After she enchants the guards with her voodoo magic, she gets to wear whatever she wants!’
“I was like, ‘Wait! Let me call my assistant and have them empty out my closet into two suitcases.’ So, I think that that’s really fun and it makes a fun, exciting visual. It’s like you’re talking about a television series where a doll goes running around killing people. Is it that unbelievable that she would wear red stilettos in jail? I think not.”
CHUCKY — “Jennifer’s Body” Episode 303 — Pictured in this screengrab: Jennifer Tilly as Tiffany Valentine — (Photo by: SYFY)
More than just maintaining an effortless sense of glamour and style, there’s a meta layer for the actress to navigate with Tiffany trapped in Jennifer Tilly’s body while on death row. When asked about switching between personas, Jennifer Tilly offers up an easy tip to track her characters while embracing the fun of the entire series.
“You know what? I get this special zhuzh-zhuzh when I put on the wig; I’m like, ‘I’m Tiffany now bitches!’ Everybody, when they see pictures of me in the blonde wig, they’re like, ‘You should go blonde.’ I’m like, ‘Well, no, that’s Tiffany.’ But it is really, really fun to have the blonde hair and be like a lethal Marilyn Monroe character,” Tilly explains. “Then the doll is really fun, too, when the doll comes in because the doll has a smaller voice than Tiffany, the person. It’s a delineation between Chucky and Jennifer Tilly’s body and the actual, I mean Tiffany and Jennifer Tilly’s body and Tiffany the doll.
“It’s so funny when I’m trying to explain to people like, ‘Well, Tiffany is in Jennifer Tilly’s body, and everybody thinks she’s Jennifer Tilly, but she’s still Tiffany, so she killed a whole bunch of people. Now Jennifer Tilly is wanted for murder.’ Everyone’s like, ‘Whoa, wait! My head is spinning.’ But I always like to remind people you can watch the first three seasons on Peacock, and then you can catch up in lieu of our grand debut on April 10th.”
John Waters in “Chucky Season 3: Part 2”
If you thought Chucky invading the White House in Season 3: Part 1 was unhinged, Jennifer Tilly promises we haven’t seen anything yet. She teases what’s ahead for Part 2.
“I have to tell you, the second half is batshit crazy. It’s insane. We have John Waters coming in. He plays the creepy doll maker that created Chucky. Who better? What better casting? Who else could play the creepy doll maker that created Chucky besides John Waters?! Who we adore. John Waters played a character in Seed of Chucky, the pervy paparazzi. He’s never played the kindly father. I don’t know what, something about John, he’s got that extra zhuzh-zhuzh that he can play these parts so well. He loves Chucky and the Chucky franchise.”
Tilly continues, “There are a lot of surprises, and I’m sure you’ve seen from the trailer that Brad Dourif comes back, and he plays the living Charles Lee Ray. How he does that, you’ll have to see. But it’s pretty spectacular. We were all so thrilled to have Brad Dourif, Oscar-nominated Brad Dourif, in the flesh doing Chucky. I think the fans are going to love that.”
Only one episode remains in Season 3 of “Chucky,” and what a bloody road it’s been so far, especially for actor Devon Sawa. The actor has now officially died twice on screen this season, pulling double duty as President James Collins and body double Randall Jenkins.
If you thought Chucky’s ruthless eye-gouging of the President was bloody, this week’s Episode 7 traps Randall Jenkins in an elevator that feels straight out of an iconic horror classic.
Bloody Disgusting spoke with series creator Don Mancini and actor Devon Sawa about that ultra-bloody death sequence and how the actor inspires Mancini’s writing on the series.
Mancini explains, “Devon’s a bit of a muse. Idle Hands and Final Destination is where my Devon Sawa fandom started, like a lot of people; although yours may have started with Casper. I was a bit too old for that. But it’s really just about how I love writing for actors that I respect and then know. So, it’s like having worked with Devon for three years now, I’m just always thinking, ‘Oh, what would be a fun thing to throw his way that would be unexpected and different that he hasn’t done?’ That’s really what motivates me.”
For Sawa, “Chucky“ is an actor’s dream in that the series gives him not one but multiple roles to sink his teeth into, often within the same season. But the actor is also a huge horror fan, and Season 3: Part 2 gives him the opportunity to pay homage to a classic: Kubrick’s The Shining.
CHUCKY — “There Will Be Blood” Episode 307 — Pictured in this screengrab: (l-r) Devon Sawa as President James Collins, K.C. Collins as Coop — (Photo by: SYFY)
“Collectively, it’s just amazing to put on the different outfits, to do the hair differently, to get different types of dialogue,“ Sawa says of working on the series. “The elevator scene, it’s like being a kid again. I was up to my eyeballs in blood, and it felt very Kubrick. Everybody there was having such a good time, and we were all doing this cool horror stuff, and it felt amazing. It really was a good day.”
Sawa elaborates on being submerged in so much blood, “It was uncomfortable, cold, and sticky, and it got in my ears and my nose. But it was well worth it. I didn’t complain once. I was like, ‘This is why I do what I do, to do scenes like this,‘ the scenes that I grew up watching on VHS cassette, and now we’re doing it in HD, and it’s all so cool.“
It’s always the characters and the actors behind them that matter most to Mancini, even when he delights in coming up with inventive kills and incorporating horror references. And he’s killed Devon Sawa’s characters often. Could future seasons top the record of on-screen Sawa deaths?
“Well, I guess we did it twice in season one and once in season two,“ Mancini counts. “So yeah, I guess I would have to up the ante next season. I’ll really be juggling a lot of falls. But I think it’s hopefully as much about quality as quantity. I want to give him a good role that he’s going to enjoy sinking his teeth into as an actor. It’s not just about the deaths.”
Sawa adds, “Don’s never really talked about how many times could we kill you. He’s always talking about, ‘How can I make this death better,’ and that’s what I think excites him is how he can top each death. The electricity, to me blowing up to, obviously in this season, the eyes and with the elevator, which was my favorite one to shoot. So if it goes on, we’ll see if he could top the deaths.”
CHUCKY — “Death Becomes Her” Episode 305 — Pictured in this screengrab: Devon Sawa as James Collins — (Photo by: SYFY)
The actor has played a handful of distinctly different characters since the series launch, each one meeting a grisly end thanks to Chucky. And Season 3 gave Sawa his favorite characters yet.
“I would say the second one was a lot of fun to shoot,“ the actor says of Randall Jenkins. “The President was great. I liked playing the President. He was the most grounded, I hope, of all the characters. I did like playing him a lot.” Mancini adds, “He’s grounded, but he’s also really traumatized, and I thought you did that really well, too.”
The series creator also reveals a surprise correlation between President James Collins’ character arc and a ’90s horror favorite.
“I saw Devon’s role as the president in Season 3; he’s very Kennedy-esque,“ Mancini explains. “But then given the supernatural plot turns that happen, to me, the analogy is Michelle Pfeiffer in What Lies Beneath, the character that is seeing these weird little things happening around the house that is starting to screw with his sanity and he starts to insist, ‘I’m seeing a ghost,‘ and his spouse thinks he’s nuts. So I always like that. That’s Michelle Pfeiffer in What Lies Beneath, which is a movie I love.”
The finale of “Chucky” Season 3: Part 2 airs Wednesday, May 1 on USA & SYFY.
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