Jennifer Tilly Exclusive Interview
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In Seed of Chucky everyone's favorite killer doll returns - as the Chucky legacy continues with the introduction of an all-new family member. This time around, Chucky (voiced again by Brad Dourif) and his homicidal honey, Tiffany, are brought back to life by their orphan offspring, Glen. Then, the outrageous action goes Hollywood, as Chucky and his bride take Tinseltown by storm, unleashing a wild new rampage of murderous mayhem! Featuring Academy Award nominee Jennifer Tilly (as herself and the voice of Tiffany) and hip-hop star Redman, it's all about family values, Chucky-style!
Horror.com was lucky enough to get this exclusive interview with Ms. Tilly; Staci Layne Wilson reporting.
Wilson: The Seed of Chucky DVD is bursting, so to speak, with extras… Can you talk about some of your favorites?
Tilly: Don Mancini is a total horror film freak — he doesn’t just rent them, he is a real fan. He loves DVD extras, so he was thinking… "If I’m a film geek…" (which he is) "What would I like to see?" So I think this movie probably has more extras than probably any other DVD coming out this month. There are a couple of different versions. It has commentary with me and Don Mancini, then it has commentary with Tony Gardner, who’s one of the puppeteers.
They have my ‘Chucky Guide’ which I wrote when I was in Romania, plus a satirical short film that I made for Jay Leno [Tonight Show] about what it’s like filming the Chucky movie. And they have additional scenes inside Chucky and Tiffany’s home where they show their vacation slides, which are really funny. They have an extended scene of the Chucky masturbation scene — we know what our audience wants, and we try to give it to them! [laughs] That whole scene as shot was just to racy for the movie, but we still had to edit a little bit because we didn’t want to be totally gross. But it’s very funny.
There’s a deleted scene showing Debbie Carrington, the little person who plays Tiffany [in the movie’s movie subplot] and she is getting stalked by Tiffany. There’s just hours and hours of non-toxic fun!
Do you enjoy doing commentary, and what’s your style — research, or wing it?
I always enjoy it. I’ve done commentary before on Bound, Relax It’s Just Sex, Bride of Chucky, and now Seed of Chucky. Don is very, very prepared and he has a good sense of what people want to hear. Don and I have been friends for a very long, and so what we do… It’s like you’re watching the movie with your smart-aleck friend and your film-buff friend. Don talks a lot about the homages in the film, what he’s trying to achieve, and the trouble finding a particular character, and so on; and I just say rude things about the people I was working with! [laughs]
Have you gotten any feedback yet?
No, not yet. It’s always fun. As far as the Bride of Chucky commentary went, Don said we got very good reviews on that. I think anytime you have people that are interested in what they’re doing and the behind-the-scenes aspect to it is very interesting. I’ve watched the behind-the-scenes commentary on a lot of movies — and sometimes they’re more interesting than the movies themselves.
What was the difference for you in working with Ronny Yu, who directed Bride of Chucky and was an experienced filmmaker but new to the franchise, and Don Mancini, who is just the opposite of that?
I loved Ronny Yu, and one of the reasons I wanted to do Bride of Chucky is because I was a big fan of his work and he was one of the pioneers of the Hong Kong genre [we’re familiar with here in America]. Working with him was great. He was so enthusiastic. He’d obviously never done a Chucky movie before, but he didn’t condescend to the genre and I think that’s why Bride of Chucky was so good. The cinematographer, Peter Pau, did some beautiful, haunting scenes — and he later went on to win an Oscar for Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon. He and Ronny would come up with these amazing shots. For example, there’s this scene where I’m putting the doll back together and you see me with an eyeball putting it into the doll’s socket and it’s very sort of eerie and surreal. He had a lot of shots like that. A lot of rags flopping in the wind, and storm clouds.
On the other hand, Don is a total… um, when you see Bride of Chucky and you know that Ronny Yu directed it, it really does have that fantastical, Hong Kong film feeling that sort of fairy tale feeling. Don is 100% American in his outlook. He’s a true film buff. So when you see Don’s film, it’s very satirical and self-referential, and there are a lot of homages to other films that would be very familiar to other film buffs. Don has been preparing to do this for about 20 years; it’s finally his shot.
He was very, very prepared. He would come to the set totally storyboarded and he knew exactly how he wanted to shoot things. Don did a really, really great job directing this and he was totally involved in terms of [every aspect]. For example, he wanted Pino Donaggio to do the music because he’s a big fan. Pino did all the music for the Brian De Palma films, and Don traveled all the way to Venice, Italy to try and talk Pino into doing the music for his movie and Pino agreed. He did a beautiful score for this film.
I think they’re both very exemplary, but in different ways.
Are there any other Chucky movies planned?
I really hope so. I think Chucky’s done really well both domestically and overseas and I’m pretty sure that if it does as well on DVD as we expect it to, there will always be another Chucky movie. I don’t know how long I will be with the franchise, but obviously if Don writes a part in for me I would love to do it again because I’ve had such a good experience doing the last two. Don always makes each movie fresh and new; it’s not sort of, like… Seed of Chucky is not a tired, old leg of an ageing franchise, it’s totally reinvented. I think anything Don comes up with is going to be interesting.
I agree with you on the reinvention, because when Tiffany came along she was equal with Chucky and I can’t think of another iconic fictional killer who acquires a sidekick along the way.
There you go! Brad Dourif loves the direction his character is going in. He goes, "I love it! I have a wife, and now I have a kid that’s gender-confused and it’s great. It keeps getting better and better."
Also check out Horror.com's video interview clips with the Seed of Chucky cast!