Season two of horror series Chucky arrives on USA Network and Syfy October 5, and viewers will see a new look for the demented doll. The show description goes, “An idyllic American town is thrown into chaos after a vintage ‘Good Guy’ doll turns up at a suburban yard sale. Soon, everyone must grapple with a series of horrifying murders that begin to expose the town’s deep hypocrisies and hidden secrets.”
Showrunner Don Mancini teased the new look for the main character at a TCA Press Tour event. “The look does evolve at times, because sometimes we need to change his look to suit certain specific story elements that we might have in a specific movie or a season of the TV show,” he said.
Brad Dourif voices Chucky. Zackary Arthur, Björgvin Arnarson, Alyvia Alyn Lind, Devon Sawa and Jennifer Tilly are in the cast, too.
Tilly said of the new look: “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.”
She added about Dourif: “Brad gives them all different personalities, but they are all still Chucky because Brad does the voices so brilliantly. They are different aspects of Chucky's character.”
Chucky dates back to the 1988 slasher film Child’s Play. A murderer known as Charles Lee Ray is killed, and transfers his evil soul to the doll.
Dourif also spoke about voicing the different Chuckys. “I do a different voice for each one, or at least a different low, medium, and high kind of thing,” he said. “And then 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. Go back and do the third character.
“That's the way I have done it before this season,” he concluded, declining to reveal aspects of the new season.
Mancini shared that he spends an awful lot of time in the head of his frightful doll. “I spend an unholy amount of time thinking about Chucky,” he said. “Too much. But one of the benefits of that is you have a lot of ideas. You have ideas for characters that he can develop relationships with, different realms that he can operate in. You kind of develop those and put them in a drawer.”
If viewers are looking for a beer to drink while watching the new season, Elysian Brewing has produced Chucky: A Killer Wit Beer. ■
