Pennywise, originally portrayed by Tim Curry back in 1990, is unquestionably one of the most terrifying villains of them all. Young actor Bill Skarsgard takes over where Curry left off for Andy Muschietti’s upcoming adaptation of Stephen King’s IT, and if this on-set memory he just shared is any indication, he filled Curry’s massive clown shoes admirably well.
Speaking with his brother Alexander Skarsgard during a chat for Interview, the new Pennywise recalled an encounter with a handful of child extras that he probably scarred for life.
“At one point, they set up this entire scene, and these kids come in, and none of them have seen me yet,” Skarsgard remembered. “Their parents have brought them in, these little extras, right? And then I come out as Pennywise, and these kids — young, normal kids — I saw the reaction that they had. Some of them were really intrigued, but some couldn’t look at me, and some were shaking.”
“This one kid started crying,” he continued. “He started to cry and the director yelled, ‘Action!’ And when they say ‘action,’ I am completely in character. So some of these kids got terrified and started to cry in the middle of the take, and then I realized, ‘Holy s—. What am I doing? What is this? This is horrible.”
The kids in peril, the Losers’ Club, include Jaeden Lieberher, Finn Wolfhard, Jack Dylan Grazer, Wyatt Oleff, Chosen Jacobs and Jeremy Ray Taylor.
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Creature performer Javier Botet will play The Leper, and Nicholas Hamilton plays Henry Bowers. The cast also includes Owen Teague, who plays bully Patrick Hocksetter.
A group of young kids face their biggest fears when they seek answers to the disappearance of children in their hometown of Derry, Maine. They square off against an evil clown named Pennywise, whose history of murder and violence dates back for centuries.
The film will be in theaters September 8, 2017.