‘Chucky’ Creator Don Mancini Interview: Season 3 Part 2 Takes on M3gan, Topping the White House, More

Chucky is finally back. The bad news was the strikes meant we only got four new episodes in October. But the good news is there’s more Chucky now. That meant more opportunities to catch up with creator Don Mancini, both on Zoom and at NBC Universal’s Television Critics Association party. 

Chucky the killer doll is still in the White House, and catches up on other killer doll movies on TV. Jake (Zackary Arthur), Devon (Bjorgvin Arnarson) and Lexy (Alyvia Alyn Lind) are trying to stop him and find Lexy’s sister. Tiffany (Jennifer Tilly) is still in prison. Chucky airs Wednesdays at 10 p.m. on Syfy and USA.

Were the producers of The Boy, Dead Silence and M3gan game to be roasted by Chucky?

Yeah, they seem to be. I think they know it’s all in good fun and it’s ultimately poking fun at Chucky the most. That Chucky feels so threatened, as I have, by these other doll franchises. So yeah, it’s all in good fun. That’s Chucky’s perspective. It’s like what? This f***in’ bitch stole my moves.

Does Chucky watching M3gan rule out a crossover?

Not as far as I’m concerned but I’m sure they rightly feel that they have plenty of juice to get out of M3gan before crossing over. At least that would be my assumption. I don’t know. I met Akela Cooper. She’s lovely. I thought that movie was really fun and she’s an incredibly successful young writer. Every time I look in the paper, there’s some big thing she’s doing. So I wouldn’t rule it out. I would feel honored. I don’t know how they feel but give them a few years. 

And for what it’s worth I’m not a stickler for that either. You can do Chucky and M3gan, Chucky in space, whatever you want. Does Devon Sawa set a new record adding a fifth character to his slate?

I guess that’s true in terms of the number of characters a single actor has played. I think that must be true, yes. But there are a lot. Michael Thereriault who plays the Vice President this season, he was Lexy’s dad in season 1. He was Fiona’s evil shrink in Cult of Chucky. Adam Hurtig has been in a couple movies. So I’ve done it a lot. Lara Jean Chorostecki. But yes, I guess we have to institute now like SNL our five season club. We have to give Devin Sawa the jacket. 

Was doing Jake and Devon’s first time special for you?

Yeah, it was important to depict that because I think that’s reality and I think the actors, Zack and Bjorgvin who I think did such a great job in that scene, they also just really understood intellectually from season 1 that putting this out into the world and normalizing a teenage gay romance was a good thing to do in the world. So I think they were very motivated by that just like getting it right. So we wanted it to be fun and joyful, sort of everyone’s dream of a first time. At a fun ‘80s purple motel. 

They’re quoting Call Me By Your Name to each other. Was that movie important to you as an adult?

Yeah, absolutely. I loved that movie as, I think, the whole world did. It was a great movie and I can only imagine my response to it if I’d been 16 or 17 years old to see that at that age. So it’s wonderful that the world has turned to the point that we can do this with little or no hubbub. 

Seed of Chucky proved a surprisingly tough sell with fans. Have you found them more receptive to wild episodes of the series like the Jennifer Tilly dinner party or the prison episode with Nia Vardalos?

I think so. That’s my impression anyway and that’s one of the things that attracted me about doing Chucky as a TV series is that even in the movies, we already were becoming not necessarily adept but certainly used to juggling different tones and doing radically different things. I knew that a television show would be even more accommodating to that because you have eight hours of story to fill per season, an hour per week. That format just allows, I think, for a little bit more mixing stuff up in that way.

You couldn’t resist a bloody elevator, could you?

Well, that elevator sees a lot of action over the course of the season starting from episode 1. Remember, in episode 1 when the power goes out in the White House and everyone gets in there and they’re going down to the shelter. Then it gets stuck with the doll in the darkness. Several other murders happen in the elevator so I just thought of it as the hellevator. But yeah, it was a fun scene to do and I think as uncomfortable as it was for the actors, I think that they had a good time with it. 

But as a Shining homage, you had to.

Yes, it’s fun to imagine what was on the other side of those elevator doors. 

After Chucky committing murder in the White House, is that a tough act to follow for your next season or next movie?

No, because it’s not necessarily about going bigger in an obvious way. I know especially in this time where people have been talking a lot about Chucky in space and what not, which people seem pretty divided on. My observation is that the fandom seems very down the middle on that but it’s not about going bigger. It’s really about the situation itself. I’ve already pitched season 4 to the studio and to the network. So I hope we get to do it because it’s a really cool new venue and a different vibe. We try to do some kind of semi-radical reinvention every season or every movie.

There have now been more hours of the series than the movies combined.

There’s, what, 24 hours now. Eight times three so a day’s worth of Chucky materials just from the TV show alone. 

When you came back for the last four, were the scripts already written before the strike?

We had to have all the scripts written by May 1 so we could be prepared to shoot in the event of a strike. As we know, there was a strike, two of them in fact. By the time we had to shut down, we had finished almost six of the episodes. So when we reconvened in November it was really just primarily 7 and 8 we had to shoot. We did do some rewriting inevitably. If you’re able to, you do. That was what one thing that was really scary was while we were shooting for a lot of it, we couldn’t rewrite. 

I know the first Child’s Play was a bittersweet experience for you, and the latest 4K UHD extras really go there when you and David Kirschner tell stories about the production and development. Has the longevity and credit you receive for creating Chucky been the ultimate reward?

Yes, but I don’t really think of the first Child’s Play movie [negatively]. It was more sweet than bitter, put it that way. There was some bitterness to it but I think in the end it worked out well, I think. Bless the Writers Guild for supporting writers. That’s all I’ll say about that. 

In some of the movies you wanted to have Chucky actually kill a kid and Universal never let you. When you had Chucky kill Jake’s foster brother with the bomb in season 2, did USA and Syfy put up any resistance?

No. I think not surprisingly maybe given that it’s the Syfy channel, the people who run that love this genre. I think they actually go see these kinds of movies and TV shows in a way that maybe the people we were working with then didn’t. They’re just more down with the shock value of what we do. It’s called Child’s Play, right?

Had you ever pitched the White House as one of the movies?

I’ve never pitched it. I’ve thought about it before but I was just thinking actually broadly, I was going to write something non Chucky related about a haunted White House because I’ve always been fascinated by the lore. 

We’ve spoken long enough that I recognize when some of your ideas make it into the series in different forms, like the Clockwork Orange brainwashing of Good Chucky. Was Chucky aging an idea you ever had for one of the movies?

I’ve had that for a long time. It’s something that we’ve discussed doing before but we just didn’t have the budget for it or whatever. So it happily worked out to do it this time. 

And the Col. Kurtz Chucky?

That actually was the idea of one of my fellow writers in the writers room. I think it might have been Mallory Westfall, I’m not sure but that wonderful idea was someone else’s. But, it was partly inspired by just photographs of sometimes we take Chucky’s wig off on set. We just look at bald Chucky and he looks totally different. We’ve got to do something with that. 

Did Brad Dourif enjoy doing a Brando voice?

He loved that. He loved that and he loved good Chucky as well. 

You once told me an idea of a Hannibal spoof before the show ever existed where a Chucky victim came back for revenge. Are you still hoping to work that in?

Yeah, I think that’s a fun idea. The idea of Chucky’s last surviving victim likes revenge.

Reading old horror magazines I saw news stories where you wrote a draft of a Green Hornet script for Eddie Murphy and Kull the Conquerer? What were your versions of those?

Kull the Conquerer I did a production rewrite on that movie just prior to shooting and on set. Basically, they hired me to tailor it to Kevin Sorbo. It was a really fun shoot. I did that with my friend in Slovakia. Rafaella de Laurentiis was the producer. I worked with her and Dino many times over the years so she asked me to do that. That was really fun. The Green Hornet, Eddie Murphy wasn’t involved when I did that. I was hired to write a draft and it didn’t go anywhere. They did eventually make a movie of it.