That voice. Onscreen, Jennifer Tilly speaks in a breathy, high-pitched register not unlike that of Marilyn Monroe, whose “ditzy” characters knew how to wield their beauty and hide their cunning. “We were all obsessed with Marilyn Monroe back then,” Tilly, 65, says, recounting her early days as a “sex pot” actress in the 1980s, coming up around the same time as Rosanna Arquette and Kim Basinger.
This was before Tilly scored an Oscar nomination for her role in the 1994 Woody Allen movie Bullets Over Broadway , before she starred as a mob wife in the Wachowskis’ cult 1996 film, Bound ; and before she became the bride of Chucky. Off screen, Tilly’s voice is deeper, sweeter even, than how she sounds in her memorable appearances on Johnny Carson’s The Tonight Show or in Liar Liar opposite Jim Carrey. Four decades into her career, she’s as beautiful and cunning as ever, but also settled, and it comes through in the full-toned responses to questions about her longest running job as the lead of a horror franchise or her more recent decision to officially join The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills universe.
Our first conversation takes place just after the third season of Chucky finished airing on Syfy in May. (Our second takes place in between Housewives shoots the next month.) Tilly plays Tiffany Valentine, Chucky’s platinum-blonde, serial-killing counterpart who first appeared in 1998’s fourth Child’s Play installment, Bride of Chucky.
Tilly relishes her rol.