| Grace Poole | |
|---|---|
 | |
|
Gender: |
Female |
|
Death: |
1990 |
|
Portrayed By: |
|
|
First Appearance: |
|
Grace Poole is a social worker and the head of the Midtown Children's Crisis Center, where Andy is sent after Karen is forced to go under psychiatric observation.
Child's Play 2 (1990)
While Grace does not believe in his story of the killer doll, she does believe that Andy may have witnessed some horrible things. More importantly, Grace hopes to find a family that would take Andy in, and help him recover from the horrible trauma he suffered. She reaches out to Joanne and Phil, who are known to be very well with kids. Grace explains to them Andy's past, and tells them that she believes that Andy needs a normal family environment to help give him a fresh start.
Joanne seems eager, but Phil is cautious and asks how it has affected Andy. Grace explains that to come in terms with things he could not understand, he turns it all into a sort of "fairy tale". Andy has insisted that his doll had been possessed by the soul of Charles Lee Ray, the Lakeshore Strangler. Phil remains skeptical, but Grace assures him that he built it up as a coping device, and that Andy just wants to move on and live his life again.
Chucky's Involvement
Later in the night of a lightning storm, Grace is seen making photocopies, while trying to get another foster child to go to sleep. During this time, she gets a mysterious phone call from a man. The man wants to know the whereabouts of Andy, and she asks who the man is. He simply answers, "This is his Uncle Charles". It is most likely she told him Andy's whereabouts, not knowing she was talking to the newly resurrected Chucky.
Chucky eventually finds Andy and torments him. Chucky kills his school teacher and eventually kills Phil, causing Joanne to break down and send Andy back to Grace. Despite what happened with Phil, Grace does not lose her trust nor care for Andy. If anything, she tries to make sure he was alright, and tucks him in. Grace and Andy get a surprise later at night, when the fire alarmed is pulled. As they walk downstairs, they spot Kyle, who is being held at knife point by Chucky in the back. When she asks if Kyle pulled the alarm, she quietly says Chucky did it.
Death
"Amazing! Isn't It?" Grace moments before her murder.
Believing it is a joke, she angrily pulls Kyle back into her office, along with Andy. When she confronts Kyle and takes Chucky from her, she gets a shock when Chucky raises his knife to her. He stabs her repeatedly and she falls against the scanner that copies her face before she dies. When Andy stares at Grace's dead body in shock, Chucky snaps at him and exclaims, "You act like you've never seen a dead body before!".
Trivia
- Grace is Chucky's 10th victim since Child's Play.
- Before Zabriskie was cast, Mary Steenburgen and Karen Black were considered to play Grace Poole.
- Kyle was under her care at some point, as she said to Andy after Phil's death.
- Zabriskie's character's death at the second film's climax at Chucky's hands could be a nod to what happened to Zabriskie's other character in the 1980 Don Knotts and Tim Conway comedy The Private Eyes, where her character was found dead also at the climax with a doll propped to look like it was strangling her to death before it was revealed she faked her own death.