New ‘It’ Pennywise So Scary He Makes Extras Cry

Those of us who grew up with Tim Curry’s unforgettable performance as the terrifying clown in Stephen King’s ‘It’ tend to look to the upcoming remake with a mixture of scorn and curiosity. Any actor taking the role has big shoes to fill. 

Bill Skarsgard, the new Pennywise, has 21 acting projects under his belt, including Hemlock Grove, and is the son of respected actor Stellan Skarsgard. He has humbly stated on the role, “Tim Curry’s performance was truly great, but it’s important for me to do something different because of that. I’ll never be able to make a Tim Curry performance as good as Tim Curry.” 

In a recent interview, Skarsgard discussed an incident during filming when he frightened some children just by appearing:      “At one point, they set up this entire scene, and these kids come in, and none of them have seen me yet. 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 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 shit. What am I doing? What is this? This is horrible.”

Afterwards, Skarsgard reportedly tried to console them, but did not give details whether the children welcomed the apology from him since he was still in costume.

Source: Screenrant.com, IMDB