Jake Wheeler, his boyfriend Devon Evans, and their friend Lexy Cross continue to try and stop Chucky’s schemes in the third season of Chucky. The killer doll has made his way to Washington, DC, to plant himself with the first family in the White House. Hungry for more power and an unquenchable bloodlust, Chucky will continue his rampage as he terrorizes the residents of the White House.
Don Mancini, who wrote all seven of the Child’s Play movies, created Chucky as a follow-up to Cult of Chucky. The third season stars returning cast members Jennifer Tilly, Zackary Arthur, Bjorgvin Arnarson, Alyvia Alyn Lind, Fiona Dourif, and Brad Dourif reprising their roles. Devon Sawa also returns, but in a new series regular role.
Screen Rant spoke with Sid Armour, the head of the makeup department for Chucky, about the third season. She revealed a fun Easter egg to keep an eye out for with Jennifer Tilly’s makeup. Armour also shared how working on Chuck is a full-circle moment in her career and teased Halloween at the White House.
Sid Armour Talks Chucky Season 3
Screen Rant: Sid, I’m a huge Chucky fan. I feel like this show surprises me every single time. I think, “Oh, there’s no way they can top that.” And then they do it. How do you balance maintaining a sense of realism with the fantastical and frightening elements while working on the makeup for a horror series like Chucky?
Sid Armour: Well, even though it is a little campy, even though it is about a killer doll, we still approach it as authentically as we can. We still want to do all of the killer makeups to exact. And the actors themselves, they can make it laughable. They can make it scary. It’s kind of up to them, but we do try to make it look good.
And you guys do a fantastic job. Now, talk to me about some behind-the-scenes moments or challenges you faced while crafting the makeup for this season of Chucky.
Sid Armour: For this season of Chucky, we do a lot of Easter eggs on our show, which it just may be for my own personal enjoyment to laugh along. For Jennifer, she’s such a pro, she’s always so on board and we do like to give her as many teardrops on her somewhere to represent every murder that she’s committed. So, this year we tried to get as many teardrop diamonds on her nails as we could and some on her face. Maybe nobody even knows that, but me and Jennifer Tilly are like, yeah, that’s so cool. Let’s do that.
I love it because you just gave me a tiny little exclusive and Easter egg all in one. I think that’s great. Now, it’s something I can look out for trying to pick out different little Easter eggs and moments. Can you share any signature makeup effects or transformations viewers can anticipate in the upcoming season without giving too much away in terms of spoilers?
Sid Armour: Sure. Oh. Geez, without giving too much away.
Or, hey, give it all away. We want the news, we want the tea.
Sid Armour: You want the tea. I’m not really sure exactly how much I’m allowed to say. I’m not sure how much I’m allowed to say.
Can you share any kind of techniques or materials you utilize to achieve that eerie, unsettling look for Chucky season 3?
Sid Armour: So Chucky is done by the puppeteer department and the creator of the Doll Witches, Tony Gardner, and he has a six person puppeteer department. And it is a very expensive doll, and there are many dolls that do all different things. So, there’s not just the one Chucky doll, there’s many. And so we all stay as far away as we can from Chucky, and Chucky can only have certain bloods used on him. So, if we’re going crazy and splattering the whole room and splattering the cast in blood, it’s a conversation of how are we not going to get Chucky in the way of this? Because you don’t want to stain Chucky’s face because that could be really expensive. So, we have to respect the doll.
Absolutely. Just out of curiosity, what was your entryway to Chucky? Were you a fan of Chucky growing up and was this kind of like a dream project for you? Or was it almost the opposite where it was like, “Well, I got thrown into this world and here we are.”
Sid Armour: Oh my gosh. So, I always loved horror and I did get to work on Bride of Chucky a little bit when I first moved to Toronto. And then all of these years later, I just had it in me that I wanted… As soon as I heard about the series, I just had it in me that it was something I really wanted to do and I had no idea the lengths and how big and how fulfilling it was going to be. I knew it would be fun.
I had no idea there were going to be multiple seasons and how much blood and how much I was going to get to do. And it’s also really high glam. I have a runway background, and so it’s really fun making everybody super high fashion as well as covered in blood. It’s just been great.
Absolutely. And so that must be a full circle moment for you, right? Working on Bride of Chucky, then coming all the way around to Chucky the series and three seasons in.
Sid Armour: I know. I know. And we’re three seasons in, and it’s just like when we all sit sometimes and talk about the possibilities of what would be fun for future seasons, you could just let your mind go wild because everything’s on the table and Don Mancini is so creative and there’s so many different ways that Chucky can get out there and start killing people, so it’s really fun.
Which character had the most different transition into makeup that was the biggest challenge for you in season three?
Sid Armour: Oh, that’s interesting. Well, we have a lot of new characters, but I mean definitely, even though it’s small, Devon Sawa is a different person.
I was going to ask about that because he plays the priest last season, and he’s the president this season. How does that look change?
Sid Armour: It’s just grooming. He’s got a tan because he’s on camera a lot and he’s distinguished. He has a certain coiff hair do, he’s so much fun, and he’s so up for anything. And yeah, he’s a really fun guy to work with. Yeah.
Can you walk me through the collaboration process with the show’s creative team and the directors to make sure that the makeup aligns with the overall vision of Chucky season 3?
Sid Armour: Sure. I have lots of ideas. And then they always say, lets sidebar makeup because she’s talking way too much about stuff that’s happening way down the line, because I really want the show to be all about makeup. And it is. And we do collaborate with all the different departments. There’s a lot of meetings about who does what, and I really love that because I think one of the fun things about film is learning what the other people do.
I know what I’m doing and I’m doing new cool things, but there’s always somebody else that knows a little trick or something that’s going to happen, and we’re always doing a different murder and it’s just every day is a really fun day that way. I love that.
Now this season starts off in the White House, and you kind of touched on this a little bit, but I feel like the glam of the show in terms of the makeup and aesthetic is elevated a little bit this season. Can you talk about how that differs from previous seasons that we’ve seen in the past?
Sid Armour: Well, Jennifer is the most glamorous, for sure. And if it’s possible, we got even bigger with that. But we also have Halloween. And Halloween at the White House is a whole different ball game than just Halloween going down the street. People have money and there’s people there. And so we had just tons and tons of characters that we had to create. And it was so much fun because also Don Mancini makes a lot of references. He really is a film buff and you can see everybody on the Zoom meeting. He’ll say, “Oh, let’s do that. We’ll do The Godfather, that scene in the Godfather with Jennifer Tilly and the horse head.”
And you can just see everybody, everyone’s nodding. And then you know that as soon as we finish our meeting, everyone’s looking up the movie trying to figure out what he’s talking about because he is referencing so many genres and so many films and it’s really amazing and he just makes it happen. And we just all make it happen.
How often do the actors on Chucky have input into their look on the show?
Sid Armour: That’s a great question. I definitely am a character driven makeup artist. I think that what the character is drives who they are. And you know what? Most of our actors are definitely on board with that, and they have their own vision. And we have lots and lots of meetings with Don about what that character would be doing.
And Don’s super inclusive with letting me and some of the other departments talk about how we see a lot of the characters, like the Glenn and Glenda character last season. That was huge. And there was a lot to that. Again, maybe not every viewer understands what went into what, but I love listening to what people think that they’re going to… What actors think is their character.
When you’re paging through the scripts and reading these different characters, do you already form the look in your head of what they’re going to look like?
Sid Armour: Oh yeah, sure. And you know what sometimes especially… These scripts are like, I can’t tell you how smart they are and how funny and how well done and the little things that they write just for the reader in between paragraphs. And it’s really been a pleasure just to read the scripts and start thinking about it.
And I just go crazy and start thinking about their characters in my mind and then start talking to all of the actors about what they see. And then as artists do, sometimes I’ll just be sitting there doing nothing and ideas will start coming to me. And I really like that. I really want all the decisions that I make to be based on something that has to do with their character. I’m not very much on being influenced by other people’s work. I’ll say that.
About Chucky Season 3
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?
Check out our other Chucky season 3 interviews here:
- Jeff Skochko
- Alex Hedlund
