Six Cool Things We Learned About ‘Chucky’ Season Two
SYFY and USA hit Chucky is back with a second season that star Jennifer Tilly says is “even better than season one.” Chucky, one of the top three new cable drama series of the year, left off with the evil doll’s plan to invade America’s children’s hospitals foiled. For that, there will be hell to pay, which is bad news for teens Jake (Zackary Arthur), Devon (Bjorgvin Arnarson), and Lexy (Alyvia Alyn Lind), as well as Chucky’s ex, Tiffany (Tilly).
The NBC Universal 2022 TCA Press Tour featured a panel that gave us some hints about the upcoming second season, debuting on SYFY and USA on October 5. Season two finds our trio sent to a Catholic school - which is not good for Jake and Devon’s relationship - while still having to fight for their lives against the killer doll. Lind dubs the new school “a scary Hogwarts,” and creator Don Mancini says it’s a dark, new playground for Chucky. Jake, Devon, and Lexy have aged since last year, and now they have new obstacles in their paths, “not just in terms of surviving Chucky, but in their own relationships as well,” Mancini said.
Here are some of the most interesting things from the TCA panel for Chucky:
SEASON TWO TAKES PLACE AT A CATHOLIC SCHOOL, WITH INSPIRATION FROM RELIGIOUS HORROR MOVIES LIKE THE OMEN AND THE EXORCIST.
“Any religion, I think, presupposes a belief in the supernatural. And, so, to have Chucky intersect with that, I think is just really interesting,” Mancini said. “One of the things we have always found is that Chucky often is at his most entertaining when he is subverting the status quo, and/or going after authority figures, and puncturing that kind of unthinking confidence - or hypocrisies people or institutions can have. So, it is a fun arena to set Chucky loose in.”
Mancini also said that having been raised Catholic, growing up as a young gay kid, “Of course that impacted me.” And sadly it seems like it is going to impact Jake and Devon’s relationship, too.
CREATOR DON MANCINI HAS BEEN THINKING ABOUT DOING CATHOLIC HORROR FOR A WHILE.
“When you have an ongoing franchise, I spend an unholy amount of time thinking about Chucky. Too much,” Mancini joked. “But one of the benefits of that is you have a lot of ideas… You kind of develop those, and put them in a drawer. So, it is something I have been wanting to do for a while. I really enjoy plugging all of our characters into different sub-genres of horror. Someday we need to do Chucky as a vampire, Chucky as a zombie...”
THE KIDS ARE NOT ALL RIGHT.
Of course Devon, Jake, and Lexy have been deeply traumatized from all of the death and destruction in season one. “They cannot talk about the trauma they have endured with anybody other than each other, and they have kind of lost contact at this point,” Lind said. “So, they are just having to push it all down, and just pretend like everything is okay, when it is definitely not. Lexy has turned to drugs. She is trying to cope in any way possible, because she feels like she has lost every single person who she loved. And Devon and Jake are not there for her.”
Arnarson said, “There's a break in between. Devon wants to reconnect with Jake, and try to form this relationship more, but then it doesn't end up working out… They are trying really hard, especially Devon, to connect. But he can't seem to get to Jake, and that becomes a big thing.”
“This season, Jake is dealing with all of the guilt that has been placed upon him, because he feels really responsible for all the damage that has been caused, and the people that effected,” Arthur said. “That relationship between him and Devon, you will get to see how that develops in this new environment, and how Chucky reacts in that new environment.”
THIS YEAR WE LEARN MORE ABOUT GLEN/GLENDA.
“Fans have been wanting to know that since 2004,” Mancini said. He credits the TV format for allowing him “to get more into characters' history, and relationships, and go down different avenues, and explore characters that fans have been wanting to know more about.”
DEVON SAWA IS BACK.
Sawa is back, playing a third character for the Chucky TV series. This season he is working in what Tilly joked is the “hot priest genre." Sawa said, “I was excited when I got the news that I would be coming back. I've loved this from the beginning. This character was a little easier to play than the last two jerks that I played. It's been a blast. I have been having so much fun with this thing, and I am just fortunate to be on it, and to be getting that 10 percent discount on my Chucky merchandise, which is at Hot Topic, by the way."
WE’LL SEE EVEN MORE ITERATIONS OF CHUCKY.
Mancini says Chucky’s look is always “very deliberate,” and it changes based on different story elements. Though it never strays too far from the original description, “two feet tall, red hair, blue eyes, freckles, blue overalls, red sneakers."
“I think it is very exciting for the fans, every year, to see the new incarnation of Chucky. It keeps us fresh and new. He is recognizable, but you mix it up a little bit, and it is fun for them to see,” Tilly said. “Brad gives them all different personalities, but they are all still Chucky, because Brad does the voices so brilliantly.”
“Yeah, when there are different Chuckys, I do a different voice for each one, or at least a different low, medium, and high, kind of thing,” said Brad Dourif, who has voiced Chucky since 1988. “There's a bit of a personality that comes from reading the script, and I go from beginning to end, in one character, and then go back to the beginning, and do the second character, etc.”
When asked why Chucky translates so well to television, Mancini said the “YA element,” really works for them. “Aesthetically, we love to do over-the-top stylistic, grandiose, visual stuff. And I think that's the way teenagers’ emotions work. Teenagers’ emotions are over-the-top and big,” Mancini said. “That's how you experience things when you are a teenager. Everything is incredibly vivid. So, I think that our franchise is a great fit for that.”
Chucky is back on SYFY and USA, October 5, 2022. I’ll leave you with some of the cast’s favorite Chucky memories.
Don Mancini (creator): “I have a lot, a lot of great memories. One of my favorite moments from season one was the Jake-Devon kiss. And that was something we planned, and talked about a lot, and worked on, and everyone was -- it was very nervous energy on the set that night. They did such a great job, and had us all crying when that happened. Just knowing that that went over so well, and the characters and that relationship embraced by the LGBTQ community, that really meant a lot to all of us."
Devon Sawa (Logan & Lucas Wheeler, Priest): “My favorite moment was the video game scene. I have a lot of moments from this season, but I don't want to talk about them, because they are spoilers. But last year, that sweet scene with them playing video games, it was beautifully shot. It was grounded. It was just this cool little scene with Chucky and the little girl (Carina Battrick), and I don't know why it just -- it is the first thing I think about with season one, and my favorite moment for sure… that I am not in.”
Alyvia Alyn Lind (Lexy): "My favorite moment is when we saw Chucky flip us off in the first season in the hospital. One, because it was a really fun night to film, and, two, because that was the first time we see the three amigos kind of coming together… That is the first time that Devon sees Chucky actually moving, and being human-like. And I remember watching that with our whole Chucky group, and it got a big gasp from everybody."
Zackary Arthur (Jake): “My favorite moment is from this season, that obviously I can't talk about. But, you know, I think last season there's a scene with Chucky and Caroline, and he goes, ‘Snug as a f*cking bug in a rug.’ I thought that was really funny.”
Brad Dourif (voice of Chucky): “From the movie, the night that Chucky got lucky. Because I was shocked. When Chucky had sex, I wasn't expecting to be shocked, but I was so shocked and delighted. That was my favorite moment.”
Jennifer Tilly (voice of Tiffany): “We were the first people to do doll sex. I know South Park did doll sex after we did our doll sex. It was really fun, because the way that we worked, Brad and I were in adjoining booths, so we could improvise. I improvised 'Chucky, Chucky -' because she hasn't been a doll for so long. 'Do you have a rubber?' And then Brad improvised, 'Rubber? Look at me, baby, I am all rubber.' So, they had unprotected sex, which led to an unplanned pregnancy, which is a lesson for the kiddies."
