Chucky Boss Don Mancini Breaks Down That Zany Sam Raimi-Inspired Kill and the Casting of [Spoiler]: ‘It Was Kismet’
Tiffany may be behind bars, but by no means is anyone safe from her wrath.
In Wednesday’s midseason finale of Chucky (the last four episodes will air sometime in 2024), Tiff was forced to get accustomed to her new reality, but that didn’t stop her from scheming… and murdering. After meeting celebrity chef Evelyn Elliott (played by guest star Nia Vardalos), the two seemed like fast friends. But after Evelyn learned that “Jennifer” killed her own sister Meg, the chef suddenly wanted nothing to do her.
When Tiff received her “legally mandated religious items” (a Voodoo for Dummies book and a bunch of voodoo dolls), she called on Damballa to help her kill Evelyn while the woman was teaching a cooking class for inmates. What followed was a delightful bout of physical comedy from Vardalos, as Tiffany forced Evelyn (via voodoo doll) to go knife-happy on her own neck and wrist, before using a peeler to remove the skin on her hand. The horror show didn’t stop there. Evelyn then placed her face directly on a grill before dunking her entire head into a vat of boiling hot water.
“We were trying to allude to Sam Raimi and Bruce Campbell with that sequence,” creator Don Mancini tells TVLine about the death scene that almost feels right out of Evil Dead 2. “Nia was just so brilliant at the physical dark comedy, of just constantly injuring herself. She said, ‘No one ever thinks of me for stuff like this,’ because she’s a rom-com queen. She’s the rom-com queen, of course, because My Big Fat Greek Wedding is still, to my knowledge, the highest grossing rom-com in Hollywood history.”
Mancini randomly ran into Vardalos while out to dinner with Zackary Arthur (Jake) and his family. Arthur expressed how much he loves rom-coms and hopes to star in one some day.
“In walks Nia Vardalos with some friends and she sits down at the table next to ours. I said to Zack, ‘Oh my god, Zack, do you know who that is? She’s the queen of rom-coms,’ so we just started talking with her. She was really nice. Cut to six months later or whatever it was, our fantastic casting director, Bonnie Zane, suggested Nia for this role and I went, ‘Yes! That’s perfect.’ It was kismet. That had to happen. And Nia was just all in for it. She loved doing that physical comedy.”
That wasn’t the only gruesome kill in the episode, and the blood and gore only got gnarlier and nastier. SNL‘s Sarah Sherman also guest-starred as Annie, a nanny hired to watch Henry during the White House’s annual Halloween party. No surprise here: She didn’t make it out alive either. Chucky, seeing the shindig as an opportunity to prove himself to Damballa, loosened the bolts on a massive chandelier that fell and took out what felt like half of the partygoers. Blood splattered, entrails spilled out and Sherman’s Annie? Her face was sliced right off by shards of glass.
Mancini did see Sherman’s disturbingly funny performance as Chucky on Saturday Night Live, so it was a perfect full-circle moment to have the comedian become one of the doll’s fresh victims on screen this season.
“I loved it!” he says of the skit. “We were in pre-production on Season 2 when that dropped. It was such a great little pick-me-up. How exciting that was — and I’ve been a fan of hers just from watching her on the show. Her specific brand of body horror comedy that she’s brought to SNL is so new and fresh.
“I got in touch with her, I sent her a doll and we stayed in touch, so it was fun to actually be able to meet her for real. It was our goal to honor her with a death that would send her out in full Sarah Sherman glory.”
And if you thought Episode 4’s deaths were bats–t insane, just wait till you see what Mancini and his crew have in store for the future.
“We do make an attempt to keep raising the bar and we have some great [kills] coming in the back half of the season as well,” he teases.
Was the Chucky midseason finale everything you wanted it to be? Grade the episode below, then light up the comments!
