Dear readers, I'm delighted to share with you this interview of the fantastic Christine Elise McCarthy! Lately, I've asked you all on Facebook which questions you would like me to ask to Christine, either about personal life, career or role as Kyle, the teenager who faced Chucky in Child's Play 2. So many people replied and I have selected some of the greatest questions.
So, here's all you ever wanted to know about Christine Elise !
Chucky cast seems very close and united, did you kept good relations with them all ?
Christine Elise : I stayed friends with Don after the second one, so I was friends with him through the intervening years between 2 and Cult, and we have friends outside of this franchise in real life, in common. And I’m actually friends with Jennifer Tilly in real life, I knew Jennifer before she got the part in Bride, and she actually asked me whether she should do Bride or not. There’s that element of Los Angeles being a small town, so just knowing people socially kept the family alive, too.
I got back in touch with Alex in 2011 when I started doing conventions, and Alex feels like my real little brother, and he was a baby when Don met him and Don’s known Alex his entire life, Alex was six when he did the first film. So Alex’s earliest memories involve Chucky and the cast and crew of those films, so that’s sort of family for him, too. And then Don literally cast Brad Dourif’s daughter (Fiona) in Curse and in Cult, and Kevin Yagher, who designed the first Chucky and Freddy Krueger and the Cryptkeeper, married Catherine Hicks, who was the mom in the first one. So there’s multiple layers of family, from literal family, husband and wife, father and daughter, faux movie family like me and Alex, and then sort of extended chosen family, which I think most of us are to each other. Alex & I are super close, though.
Will Kyle ever get a back story, as we all want to know what happened to your character ? do you have any informations about her story since Child’s Play 2 ?
C.E. : That is a question for Don Mancini. I have no insider info there.
Do you have your own Chucky doll at home ?
C.E. : Not a screen-used one. Alex has one of those. I do have the AMAZING Trick or Treat Studios Chucky & I love him. I did an unboxing of him on my Youtube channel.
Which scene have been the most difficult one to shoot and why ?
C.E. : One experience that I like to talk about on that set that’s unusual for people, that they would never guess, is that Alex (Vincent) was seven years old and his hours were restricted by child labor laws, he could only work a certain amount of hours and he had to go in to his tutor and go home. And then Chucky was run by nine puppeteers that were all union actors, as I was and Alex too, but Alex is one, I’m one and Chucky is nine. So when I shot scenes with Alex and Chucky, what we would do is they’d shoot the establishing shot, which is the big, wide shot of everything that happens for the whole scene so that the audience has some sense of the geography of the location, so when you move in for close-ups, you know where they are and where they’re positioned in the room, et cetera. So I do the wide shots and then we move in and shoot all of Alex’s close-up stuff first and then send him home, because he had the shortest work day, and then we’d shoot all of Chucky’s stuff because Chucky was so much more expensive to have on-set than I was. So they’d shoot Chucky’s stuff, then send Chucky and the puppeteers home, and then I would do all of my close-up work with just a blue piece of tape on a stand, “That blue tape is Alex and that red tape over there is Chucky. Go.” So I was acting, almost, in a vacuum. And I really wasn’t an experienced actor either, so it was challenging.
Will Kyle be back in the upcoming Chucky TV series ?
C.E. : I HOPE SO! But they have not yet reached out to me.
Was it hard to play your role with an animated doll ?
C.E. : People always ask “Was it harder to work with a doll?” or “What’s it like working with a doll rather than a human being?” and that is pretty much the same, it’s just all acting. The stuff that’s happening in the scenes, for the most part, isn’t real for you at all anyway. Being chased by a murderous doll or having to do a love scene with somebody you’re not in love with, it’s all acting, it’s all just pretend. So those things are equally easy or difficult depending, but acting with neither — no actor and no doll, just pieces of tape — that was actually challenging.
How were you selected for the role ?
C.E. : The standard way work comes for most actors that are starting out, I had an agent that submitted me, they had me come in for an audition, I auditioned, and after a couple of auditions I got the part. I’ve never had an audition process take more than two, but I have never done gigantic, blockbuster stuff where there’s that much deliberation going on. I read for it, they actually didn’t cast me right away, it should have just been one audition and been cast, but they didn’t find the girl in the first pass, so they decided to bring back girls that they thought were near-misses the first time. I went back in a second time and had just done an episode of 21 Jump Street and was actively shooting an episode of the old Baywatch, so I had to go into the audition before I went to work on Baywatch. I was kind of in a hurry and impatient, and actors in general have a lot more confidence when they’re auditioning if they’re actually currently working, and I think that reality made a little difference in my attitude in the room and I think that’s why I got the job.
Was Chucky already animated like he is nowadays with Alterian animatronics ?
C.E. : Chucky has always been a practical SFX doll. Not CGI.
Which is your favorite scene of Child’s Play 2 ?
C.E. : The cigarette on the swing - leading into Kyle's realization that Chucky might be real.
How do you felt joining Beverly Hills 90210 cast, while the series already existed. How viewers and fans reacted at the arrival of your character ?
C.E. : I'm an actor that tends to hang out with the crew. That show was such a huge phenomenon, and the cast members were sort of just all still reeling from that. It was still a new thing for them, that level of fame. And they were busy. They were busy in their lives—it wasn’t like I was really trying to be their friend in real life. I did most of my work with Jason, and Jason and Luke—Luke actually went out of his way to have lunch with me the first couple of days. He was the sweetest of all, actually, when I first got there. And then I got really close with Jason.
Which are the movies and series you enjoyed the most playing in ?
C.E. : ALL work is great but the BH90210 reboot was special because we have known each other 30 years - and I got to do comedy.
I know you are a food blogger and vlogger, what can you say about this passion ?
C.E. : I love to eat, I’ve always loved to cook, and I enjoy photography. I would cook these things and photograph them and post them on Facebook, and people would be like “That’s beautiful. What is it? I wish I had that recipe.” After years of that I was like, “I should just fuckin’ make a blog so they can have the fuckin’ recipes,” so I did. I am vegan, now. I was pescatarian, which means eating fish as well as everything else vegetarians eat, for 30 years, so when I started the blog it was pescatarian and then I gave up fish a couple of years ago so it became vegetarian, and then in the last several years or so I’ve transitioned into vegan eating. The channel’s 3 years old. After about five years of doing the blog and the blog just felt stagnant, like I’d done everything with it and reached the audience that I could, I needed to step it up and do something else, I was basically bored with the blog. I just woke up one day and said “I’m doin’ a channel!” If you watch the first couple of episodes, I didn’t have a proper camera, I didn’t have a mic, I didn’t know which direction to shoot initially, the first step and all the other ones, it isn’t until Episode 13 or so that I got the technical shit together.
Same with the blog, the blog was like “What are you going to do today?” and I’m like “I think I’m going to start a blog,” and I did. Same thing with the channel, I just woke up and I was like “Fuck it, I’m gonna do a channel.” Considering that I have to eat all the food that I make too, it’s entirely a one-man show, I do everything — I shoot it, I edit it, I make the food, I photograph the food, and I eat the food — it’s just me.
And, usually, are you a big fan of slasher and horror movies ?
C.E. : Like any film - if it is well done - I like it. I recently watched the first 4 Saw films. But - my genre of choice is documentary.
Thank you dear Christine for your kindness, and for the time you kindly granted myself and all of your fans by answering these questions.
Check out Child's Play 2 trailer and buy the movie on Amazon :
Comments