Chucky’s Don Mancini: Glen, Glenda, and Embracing Queer Representation

Can you hear that diabolical cackle? Chucky returns quickly! The hit horror collection continues the killer doll’s reign of terror that started with Child’s Play again in 1988 with a sly, campy humorousness and a outstanding means to evolve with the instances. At a current Chucky press day, io9 bought an opportunity to study extra about what’s in retailer for season two from creator Don Mancini.

This season, we’ll meet Glen and Glenda—twin kids of Chucky and Tiffany (sure, the dolls… sure, it’s difficult… simply watch 2004’s Seed of Chucky and don’t ask too many questions, okay?)—performed as younger adults by Lachlan Watson (Theo on Netflix’s Chilling Adventures of Sabrina). Speaking to a gaggle of journalists together with io9, Mancini couldn’t expose an excessive amount of about what’s in retailer for the pair with out spoiling the plot. But he did clarify a bit concerning the technical wrangling that went into bringing the characters to Chucky.

“Working with Lachlan Watson was a blast. They’re completely amazing in those roles and there were times when we were doing it that it felt like—even though I had to explain the reference, it felt like The Patty Duke Show, or Bewitched,” Mancini, name-checking a pair of classic TV exhibits the place one actor performs two characters who typically share scenes. “It’s relatively simple split-screen effects that aren’t so simple when you actually have to do it. It’s surprisingly complicated. And Lachlan fortunately just took to it like a duck to water, not only being able to play these two different characters, but just the technical challenges of having to play opposite yourself.”

Watson’s transformation from Glen to Glenda, or vice versa, was one thing Mancini and his group constructed into the capturing schedule. “Lachlan would typically be in costume as Glenda, and we would do the Glenda side of the scene, and then they would have to be sent off to hair and makeup for an hour and a half to do the transformation into Glen,” Mancini stated. “And so we would always have to be careful to schedule other stuff to shoot during that hour and a half waiting for Lachlan to come back to us as Glen.”

It was a problem, however a enjoyable problem, Mancini stated, with an necessary driving pressure behind it. “I hope that our queer audience, our trans audience, will really love these characters and the performances that Lachlan gave as these characters. I hope they love it as much as I do, because it was really important to us that we honor the trans experience with these characters.”

Fans of Chucky season one—and there are a lot; the present was a smash hit for Syfy and USA—know that queer illustration gained’t be new for season two. Two of the present’s major teen characters, Jake (Zackary Arthur) and Devon (Björgvin Arnarson), fell in love final season whereas dodging Chucky’s homicidal wrath collectively, and it’s a relationship Mancini was glad to revisit. “All of us who work on the show were so excited that the Jake and Devon romance— ‘Jevon’—worked as well as it did, and the fans really responded very positively to that,” he stated. “So I wanted to continue that relationship and I wanted to be personal with it and honor some of my own experiences, because [when I was] a teen horror fan, I wish that I could have seen some [queer] representation for myself watching this stuff. So it’s great that the world has evolved, that we can do this now, and we can do it fairly casually actually, which is awesome.”

By “casually,” he signifies that “Jevon” are a seamless a part of the narrative. Queer youngsters exist; that’s simply regular life, and is due to this fact simply one other a part of the story right here. Of course, in Chucky’s case, there’s the added issue of a killer doll on the free, to not point out the truth that Jake and Devon get shipped off to a Catholic reform faculty early in season two. “One of the struggles that young gay people often have is tension with their faith,” Mancini stated. “As a kid who was raised Catholic, I certainly had authority figures waving their fingers at me, telling me that I was bad and going to hell. And I wanted to look at what that’s like for a gay kid, or two gay kids, in a relationship, in a budding romance, [and] what that kind of stress does to the relationship. It gets very fraught for them even without having to defend themselves against multiple Chucky dolls who want to kill them. Those poor boys have a lot going on!”

It all comes again to the truth that regardless of Chucky’s gleeful gore and the diabolical antics of its villains, the present additionally has a remarkably caring coronary heart. “I think fans will enjoy seeing the progression of [Jake and Devon’s] relationship,” Mancini stated. “And I think Glen and Glenda as well, their situation is very interesting. And as I said earlier, it was important to all of us, including Lachlan, that we honor the trans experience through our own cockeyed metaphorical lens.”

Chucky returns October 5 on Syfy and USA.

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