Talk about a father-daughter duo. Some quarantine brainstorming led Mckenna Grace and her dad, Ross Burge, to write The Bad Seed sequel, The Bad Seed Returns. HollywoodLife spoke EXCLUSIVELY with Mckenna about the film, and she revealed that the original script she wrote with her dad was “too dark” for Lifetime.
“What I find really funny is that the scripts that my dad and I presented Lifetime with, it was too dark, so they brought in another writer to kind of tone down our darkness a little bit. The script that my dad and I originally presented was too dark,” Mckenna said.
While Mckenna is a full-time actress, her dad is an orthopedic surgeon. Both Mckenna and her dad wrote and executive produced the film. Mckenna noted that writing The Bad Seed Returns with her dad was a “really cool” experience to get to do together. “I really love my dad. He’s so brilliant whenever it comes to film things. He’s such a big film geek. It was really cool to be able to do that with him,” she told HollywoodLife.
The Bad Seed Returns picks up after a several-year time jump. After a murderous rampage in the first movie, Mckenna admitted that Emma has been “laying low. The thing with Emma is that I don’t think she’s killing just to kill. That’s not Emma. She’s smarter than that. If there’s a problem in her life, then she removes it. It’s as simple as that. There haven’t really been any problems. She’s been living with her aunt. Her aunt’s gotten married and just recently had a baby so now she’s kind of in this weird family setting that she’s not used to and problems start presenting themselves in Emma’s life and that’s when she gets to shine.”
The 16-year-old actress/singer, who will be returning for The Handmaid’s Tale season 5 and starring in the upcoming series A Friend of the Family, isn’t going to stop writing any time soon. Mckenna revealed that she and her dad are “in the beginning processes of trying to pitch a show that we wrote. I have been writing a script with a friend and one with my dad so it’s been pretty cool.”
As for a third Bad Seed movie, Mckenna isn’t ruling it out. “I mean, maybe. We’ll see. Only if I get to direct it,” she quipped. The Bad Seed Returns premieres September 5 at 8 p.m. on Lifetime.