'My Big Fat Greek Wedding' Star Officially Explains Why She Traded Rom-Coms for a Bloody ‘Chucky’ Death [Exclusive]
Nia Vardalos is forever enshrined as a rom-com queen thanks to both writing and starring in the My Big Fat Greek Wedding films. With its combination of laugh-out-loud moments, heart, and real experiences growing up in a Greek household, her script helped the Joel Zwick-directed original become a genre-defining box-office sleeper hit, all while earning her an Oscar nomination. Since then, her resume in romance has only grown, from My Life in Ruins, pairing her with Richard Dreyfuss, to her recent supporting turn in You, Me & Tuscany. In the 2020s, however, she's branched out into the realm of the macabre for the first time.
Vardalos' tour into the horror genre began with the more family-friendly Curse of Bridge Hollow on Netflix before she returned to the platform later that year for Guillermo del Toro's Cabinet of Curiosities, playing a charlatan medium leading Rupert Grint on a wild goose chase. Easily her bloodiest role, though, came on Syfy, where she guest-starred in Season 3 of Don Mancini's beloved Chucky series. Although her time on the series was short, Jennifer Tilly's Tiffany made sure to give her imprisoned celebrity chef a death to remember in a sequence as slapstick as it is sadistic, using voodoo to force her to prepare and cook herself. It was about as far from her usual brand of feel-good romance as it could get, but the actress was totally on board to try something new, and Tilly played a big hand in getting her ready for her first murder scene.
Over the weekend, the topic of Vardalos' gnarly Chucky death was brought up at a FanX Salt Lake City panel moderated by Collider's Maggie Lovitt, and the star was eager to dish about her experience. Her journey to getting stabbed, peeled, and fried to death began because of a scheduling conflict and a desire to do something other than a rom-com for once. "How I got cast in that show is I'd been offered yet another romantic comedy, and I wanted to do something different," she recalled. "So I said to my agents, ‘I'm not going to do that one because my child was in final exams, about to go to college, but can you find me something different, like, I don't know, a musical or a horror movie?’" Her agents granted her wish and got her Chucky, which had her taking on plenty of firsts and getting to know the woman who would kill her.
"And 3 months later they came back with, I got to be in a Chucky [episode], and I got to... Jennifer Tilly makes a voodoo doll of me. I'm a person doing a cooking show, and because she's voodooing me, I'm stabbing myself with the knife. It was the most fun I've ever had in my life. There was a stunt coordinator, so much blood, kind of gross. It was so, so disgusting. But let me tell you about Jennifer. I got to set, and she sent me a little note through the assistant director and invited me for dinner, and we sat and got to know each other for four hours before we ever filmed."
Collider Exclusive · 8 Questions · 2 Minutes What Is Your Biggest Horror Nightmare? Elm Street · Chucky · Scream · The Conjuring
Four horror franchises. Four completely different ways of scaring you. One waits until you fall asleep. One makes sure nobody believes you. One is already in your group of friends. And one is in the house with your family. Answer eight quick questions about how you actually watch horror, and find out which nightmare was built for you.
😴Elm Street(Freddy Krueger)
🧸Chucky(Child's Play)
📞Scream(Ghostface)
🕯️The Conjuring(The Warren Files)
01
Which horror scene makes you cover your eyes? Four classic images. One of them is worse than the others for you.
02
You are home alone and you hear a noise. First thought? Everybody has one. It arrives before you have decided anything.
03
Which horror movie rule would you break first? Everybody thinks they would survive. Almost nobody actually does.
04
Something genuinely frightening happens. What do you do? Not in a film. In your actual living room, tonight.
05
How do you actually watch a horror film? Be honest about this one. Nobody is checking.
06
Somebody offers you serious money. Which do you still refuse? The amount does not matter. There is one on this list you are not doing.
07
Which feeling stays with you a week after the film? Good horror does not stop when the credits do.
08
Something wakes you at 3am. What is the worst possibility? Eight questions in, this is the one that decides your nightmare.
The Lights Just Went Out Your Nightmare Is…
Four franchises, four completely different ways of getting underneath your skin. This is the one built out of your particular fear, why it works so well on you, and what it would leave behind.
Elm Street
Your nightmare does not wait outside the door. It waits for you to close your eyes, which you are going to have to do eventually, because nobody has ever won that particular argument.
- Freddy is horror's cruellest idea: a threat that lives in the one place you cannot guard, cannot lock, and cannot avoid forever.
- You are the one who is fine during the film and wide awake at two in the morning. Your own head is where this does its damage.
- These films understood exhaustion as a horror engine. The kids on Elm Street do not lose because they are weak. They lose because they are tired.
- You can lock every door in the house. You still have to sleep.
Chucky
Your nightmare is not really the doll. It is the face of the person you tell, and the way they decide, very kindly, that you have imagined all of it.
- Chucky works precisely because he is absurd. That is the trap: the more accurately you describe him, the less anybody is going to believe you.
- You are the one shouting at the screen because the characters are not listening. You know that feeling from real life too.
- The franchise is at its best when the adults in the room are the real obstacle, and you have met those adults.
- By the time somebody finally believes you, you will have handled most of it on your own.
Scream
Your nightmare has your number, knows your name, and has almost certainly been inside your house before. The worst part is that you already know them.
- Scream is the only one of these where the killer takes the mask off and turns out to be somebody who was at the party.
- You are the person who calls the twist out loud before it lands. You watch people the same way you watch films.
- The franchise made the rules of horror part of the plot, which means the survivors are the ones paying attention. You would be paying attention.
- Everybody is a suspect, including the person who just offered to walk you home.
The Conjuring
Your nightmare is not really about you. It is about the people asleep down the hall, and the feeling that whatever is here is not interested in leaving.
- The Conjuring films are domestic horror. The house, the family, the perfectly ordinary room that quietly stops feeling ordinary.
- Your instinct is to get everybody into one room. Your fear is protective rather than personal, which is rarer than it sounds.
- This is the one franchise where belief is the weapon. The people who come through it are the ones who are not alone and refuse to be.
- Whatever is here did not come for you. It came for the household, and you are the one standing in the hallway.
Jennifer Tilly Isn't the Only Jennifer Who Nia Vardalos Has Benefited From
The only downside of Vardalos' lone episode of Chucky was that she didn't get to take the voodoo doll of her home when her time was up, but she still got the full slasher death experience. "No, the voodoo doll of me, that was filmed 3 weeks afterwards, and I was going to Greece, so I didn't get to see that scene," she continued. "But they made a plaster cast of my head because my face gets boiled."
Considering Chucky was full of so many actors who've been working together on the franchise for years, Tilly helped Vardalos feel welcomed in a horror realm she's relatively unfamiliar with. Talking about the iconic actress had her think of how lucky she's been in her run-ins with Jennifers in the industry. It reminded her of being taken under the wing of Dirty Dancing star Jennifer Grey, when Vardalos was just beginning her career on-screen. The veteran actress gave her some much-needed advice and spent time working with her to help her stand out as a star worth taking a chance on.
"She's so, you know, another woman did that for me too. She's here at this festival, at this expo, Jennifer Gray, yeah! I got to thank her; not three years ago, I saw her. My very first job, I got to set, and there's Dirty Dancing, Jennifer Grey. She had a sitcom, and I just moved to LA, and she took me by the hand and said, ‘I'm Jennifer,’ and I was like, ‘I know.’ And she said, ‘You're gonna put your purse here, you're gonna put your stuff here, come with me. We're gonna sit here around this round table. We're going to read the script. The executives will be here, so don't do it at reading level. Do it at performance level because they're all watching from the network.’ And I was like, ‘What a doll.’"
All seasons of Chucky are available to stream on Peacock. Stay tuned at Collider for more.
- Release Date
- 2021 - 2023
- Network
- SyFy, USA
- Showrunner
- Don Mancini
- Writers
- Don Mancini
- Franchise(s)
- Child's Play
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