Chucky's House: Dominique Easley birthday gift takes on life of its own
Corey Collier Jr. is the latest recruit to commit to Florida with a Chucky doll (WATCH), a tradition started by former UF defensive tackle Dominique Easley.
In a two-part series, Gators Territory looks at how the horror movie character made its way to Gainesville and has become a staple of the Gators football program.
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During the 2011 offseason, Florida defensive lineman Dominique Easley hit up Walmart and bought all the Chucky horror movies.
His favorite one is Child’s Play 3.
“I’ve loved it since I was in high school,” said Easley, the former five-star recruit from Staten Island. “One week I just got all the movies and started binge watching them. The mother of my kids, who was my girlfriend at the time, that’s how she got the idea.”
For his 19th birthday, she bought Easley a Chucky doll from Hot Topic in the Oaks Mall. She gave it to him as a joke, but the doll turned into his personal sidekick.
“She just thought it was funny and she knew I liked the movies,” Easley said. “Then I started carrying it places and I was doing it to mess around, to be honest. And it really just became a thing.”
Chucky’s first appearance at Gator Walk that season came against Alabama in Week 4. Easley said teammates called him “crazy” at first, while his coaches laughed it off.
But they also let him have his fun.
“They knew who I was. They knew how I was,” Easley said of the staff’s reaction. “Back then, everybody knew I used to do kind of out-of-the-box things. I didn’t really do the norm.”
Easley even developed a pre-game ritual with the doll.
“Before I went out, I always made sure it was sitting up a certain way in my locker with his knife in his hands,” he said. “Whenever I came back, it had to be sitting the same way.”
Chucky eventually grew on the UF players. Whenever Easley would get angry, they’d give him his doll to “clear up the day.” He also went missing on a few occasions.
“They started taking it to mess with me,” Easley said. “The first person to do it was Leon Orr. I think he stole his shoes.”
Over time, however, Chucky became a team staple. Fans looked forward to seeing the doll, and it even traveled with the Gators for road games.
“One time I forgot it, so they went and got him and met me at the airport. That was the moment I realized everybody took it seriously,” Easley said. “When I started bringing it to Gator Walk, the kids liked it. Everybody started loving it, honestly. It was crazy.”
When Easley suffered a season-ending knee injury in the third game of 2013, Dante Fowler Jr. brought Chucky to Kentucky that next week and kept him in his possession for the rest of the season.
“Just with Ease [being injured], bringing a piece of him with me,” Fowler said at the time. “Just to know that he’s still there. I’ve always been liking Chucky.”
Easley took Fowler under his wing as a freshman and said he “worked his ass off and balled” after enrolling late. When Easley’s time at Florida was over the following year, he passed the doll down to Fowler.
“He had asked me for it, so I gave it to him. He became like the conductor of Chucky,” Easley said of Fowler. “He blew it up more than what I did. I just told him the next kid that you think deserves it, give it to him.”
What makes a player worthy of the Chucky doll?
“You gotta be a savage. Just relentless. That’s the one reason I liked him,” Easley explained. “He was a spirit, but he was always relentlessly trying to get back in his body. No matter what came in his way, no matter what was going on in life. That was his one goal and no one could take him off that path.”
Fowler kept Chucky for the 2014 season, but eventually bought his own so Easley could have his back. He returned to Gainesville for one of the home games to reunite with the doll.
“A lot of people were trying to take it, so we had to get him out of there. So I still got my original, like the original, original one,” Easley said of the triple OG. “It’s a little beat up, but I still got the original. They bought another one for everyone to keep passing down.”
Easley has watched the tradition take on a life of its own in recent years, from recruits committing with Chucky to multiple UF players donning the doll. Whenever he meets Florida fans, it’s always the topic of conversation.
“That’s all people talk about. People know me by Chucky when I’m in Gainesville,” Easley said. “It’s a pretty cool tradition, just to see something keep going years and years after when it was even meant to be that way. It was just a joke for me. I never thought this would happen.”