A Relatively Complex Character for a Slasher Villain: An Interview with ‘Chucky’ Creator and Showrunner Don Mancini

In Chucky’s unending thirst for power, season 3 now sees Chucky ensconced with the most powerful family in the world — America's First Family, inside the infamous walls of the White House. How did Chucky wind up here? What in God’s name does he want? And how can Jake, Devon, and Lexy possibly get to Chucky inside the world’s most secure building, all while balancing the pressures of romantic relationships and growing up? Meanwhile, Tiffany faces a looming crisis of her own as the police close in on her for “Jennifer Tilly’s” murderous rampage last season.

It’s probably no surprise by now that the horror icon that is Chucky, the slasher doll, is here to stay. And with the television series’ latest season, there’s more bonding with unsuspecting children, pop culture zingers, and special guest appearances – that may or may not lead to a fun horror scene (watch to see for yourself). However, there’s a deeper layer to this horror franchise, especially in the latter season. It deals with all the ups and downs of dealing with growing up, your moral compass, and mortality.

But the one thing that is tried and true, and what makes Chucky so iconic – is the mastermind behind the killer doll – Don Mancini. With his love and deep admiration of horror icons, he’s made a name for himself and Chucky within the horror genre.

Don Mancini spoke with Script about writing the first Chucky script while attending college at UCLA, why he loves the horror genre, exploring Chucky’s character, and writing to the slasher doll's specific voice. Plus, he shares invaluable advice for horror writers.

Buckle up. 

This interview has been edited for content and clarity.

Sadie Dean: There's this great line that Chucky quips, “I'm your friend ‘til the end.’ And I wonder for you, did you ever imagine this kind of longevity with a character like this, and seeing it live on and flourish as it has, and being developed into a TV series?

Don Mancini: I certainly never thought about the TV series. When I wrote the script when I was at UCLA, I just wasn't thinking about TV at all - I wasn't watching TV at that point in my life, and it just wasn't on the radar, or at least on my radar. I wrote that in the time of Michael Myers, and Jason and Freddy, were all viable franchises. And those characters had become horror icons. So, I dreamed of it, of course, as a horror fan in writing the script, but I didn't really think that it would come true.

My biggest aspirations really were to get an agent – I was like, ‘OK, if I can get an agent, that would be great.’ And I did. But I also was very fortunate that the script sold, it was made, and the movie was a hit - all of those things, which are these huge hurdles that you want to achieve. I got very lucky. I think it was a good idea and a good script. It was rewritten by others, that first movie. So, certainly, credit to John Lafia and Tom Holland, as well for the first movie. It's just been wonderful.

And the older I get the more gratitude, as corny as it sounds, [laughs] I have for it, because doing the TV show - I love it - we're just doing it constantly. That's one of the things I like about TV, as opposed to movies is you're just working constantly, and I've really enjoyed that. So yeah, it's been a blessing. And the character is like this ambassador that allows me and others who work on the show to travel the world and meet cool people. So, it's been pretty great.

Sadie: Just taking a quick step back to your college days as a writer, like, what was it about this script you knew you had found voice or established your voice as a writer in the horror genre?

Don: Well, it was a genre that I had always loved from the time I was a little kid. And so, I think that my aspirations in film were running in tandem with aspirations for the horror genre. This was also at the time that Stephen King entered the culture as an author. And I was really into him as a teenager. It's something I really wanted to do, and I sort of made it my business - that sounds too impersonal, in a way because it was a passion. I was just genuinely into this stuff. And this genre, and I love the filmmakers, for the most part, that I was really attached to, worked in horror and thriller genres. I loved Hitchcock De Palma and Steven Spielberg, and I loved their sort of aggressive use of the camera and telling a visual story.

Sadie: Approaching this TV series and getting to live in different worlds and exploring different locations and telling different types of stories - with Chucky at the forefront, you’ve been able to further explore his background and motives. And in an odd way, his moral compass. How do you approach that and being steadfast to this character and staying true to his authenticity from 35 years ago to now and this mainstream audience?

Don: The thing that always leads me or the thing I always follow, rather, because it does feel more like, passive on my end, [laughs] because sometimes you feel like a story is leading you and you get these ideas and you think, ‘Oh my god, what if I hadn't thought of that idea,’ and like that horrible nervousness that comes when that happens. 

What I follow is exploring Chucky's character, really, and I think at this point in the franchise, and in his place in pop culture, he's been around long enough now that he's a relatively complex character for a slasher villain. I think it's fair to say that there's more going on with Chucky than there is with Michael Myers, or Jason, or even Freddy, who, like Chucky has the virtue of speech, which those other two guys don't, [laughs] so how interesting can they be, they can't even talk. [laughs] But, it's really just thinking of what would be interesting situations and interesting ways of exploring that character.

And sometimes I'm even led specifically by thinking, what new thing can I toss at Brad Dourif, that I haven't done yet that would be fun to see him parry? We do have at our disposal one of the great actors of his generation, one of the great actors of our time, so I feel like it's part of my responsibility to posterity to milk to that dry, [laughs] you know, so it's like good Chucky and Colonel Chucky, it's just I want to give him new shit to do really - and this year, I just thought after having given him all of these variations on Chucky last year, I thought, ‘I gotta give you scenes in the flesh with Chucky the doll. And with Fiona, your daughter as young you’ - that all just like sounded mouthwatering in the abstract.

And really making it work for Chucky's character arc, it dovetails with Brad, because it's about, you know, all of us on the show are dealing with maturing, whether it's the teenage characters, they're getting older and taking steps in their lives and in their relationships, their romances; Chucky is dealing with the possibility of fading away into obsolescence and raging against the dying of the light. And I think, he's been around long enough, I've been around long enough that these are preoccupations, and they say write what you know - but I also think there's just something amusing about Chucky, the killer doll dealing with that kind of highly identifiable existential dilemma. [laughs]

Sadie: 100% - I've always found myself secretly rooting for Chucky and especially this last season being so empathetic towards him. You would never think that would be possible with this slasher doll that he would pull at your heartstrings.

Don: [laughs] We've seen all of these sides of him. He has a tender side for Tiffany, for his nonbinary child. He has tenderness for Caroline, and we also know he has slivers of good Chucky. He's a killer doll who's been around the block. [laughs] He has more stories to tell.

Sadie: I love to talk about how you and your writer’s room cleverly couple humor and horror. Especially in terms of dialogue for Chucky, because he doesn’t have a lot of dialogue, but when he does, it's very poignant and it's funny. It gets to the point and tells you what he's going to do. And it’s all incredibly creepy at the same time.

Don: Yeah, I think it's a very specific voice. And I think it's one of the things that with my fellow writers, all of whom are much younger than me, but they're all Chucky fans - they grew up loving Chucky. So, in fact, that was one of the reasons I wanted to take it into TV because I knew if I could harvest the talents of these people who were that passionate about it, it would elevate it, and indeed it has. But sometimes people have this knee jerk expectation that Chucky is about bad puns or something. And then when people would write that it would vaguely hurt my feelings. [laughs] ‘That's what you think Chucky sounds like? Chucky doesn't do that, it's not about puns.’ That's Freddy - which can be very fun, but that's Freddy's thing.

I think Chucky is much more specifically, it's about his perspective on the world. And he looks at the world through a very specific lens, which is irreverent and sort of hilariously and inappropriately mean-spirited. And sometimes unexpectedly, wise or sensible, [laughs] sometimes. Like in season one of the show, he has that conversation with Jake when he's reading Jake's diary and seeing all these like tributes to Devon. He's like razzing him, ‘Devon, Devon, Devon.’ And then he just matter of fact, he says, ‘I have a queer kid.’ And Jakes like, ‘What?! You have a kid? And you're cool with it?’ And Chucky goes, "Well I'm not a monster, Jake." I mean, I think that is a very instructive Chucky line, because it's very specific. [laughs] It's funny, it's a reverent, it's acknowledging that he is a monster in a way, but hey, he's got standards. He's not a homophobe. That's beyond the pale. And I think that's a funny thing for a slasher icon to express.

Sadie: In terms of the puppetry and working with that team – the puppet is a million light years from what it was from the first film – were there any challenges you and the writers’ room faced because of writing for a puppet or maybe some creative freedom the new team allotted you, because of what the puppet’s abilities are now?

Don: In recent years, it's much more the latter, I mean, in the sense that, when I write, and like me and my fellow writers in the room, we don't feel constrained by anything…it doesn't occur to us that there's something that they couldn't do. While kind of knowing in the back of our head, there are certain limitations in terms of how much we can show him walking across a room, because moving through space is the most complicated and time-consuming thing that Chucky does. So, we try to sprinkle that across the episodes, a few times per episode, just so that you have the sense and conviction that he can do that.

But otherwise, it really does come down to now in recent years, Tony Gardner coming to me and saying, 'Oh, I found a way to work more servo mechanisms into his forehead so that he can have this new nuance in fury.' Because so often we talk about Chucky needs to be angry...because it's like in cartoons, the eyebrows that go inward that say anger or evil. But there's so many variations on that, that the puppeteers can actually do. It was so amazing this season, I think it's gotten better every season but I think it just has to do with the fact that they're in shape, because we've done 24 hours of Chucky material in the past three years. They're such a well-oiled machine. They are constantly amazing.

Sadie: Any advice for horror writers?

Don: My advice would be to look for the metaphor because that's really the power of the horror genre -whatever device or gimmick or character, whatever you have that's on the surface, you want it to have resonance, in a metaphoric way with something that's going on in the world or in the culture at that time. And Chucky himself has been a metaphor for different things over the years. And I think that's one of the reasons for his longevity, he just symbolizes different things. So, I think that that's an important thing to keep in mind.

I'm just thinking…what are the movies that have come out recently…we have two nun and sort of vaguely anti-Catholic movies…and in my own show, I proudly do that...so I think that there's something in the culture that's being expressed there. So, I would say, don't go for the nun, because that's been done a couple of times recently. Find another metaphor, if the church is the axe that you have to grind or whatever, it's the metaphor. I mean, that's one of the things I love about a movie, like The Birds, or The Fog, in they're so abstract, you can read onto that anything…The Fog, John Carpenter's movie can be said to symbolize so many different things depending on where you're looking from.

Season 3 of Chucky is now streaming on Peacock.

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