Cast your mind back to September of 2017, and you’ll no doubt recall the moment when Bill Skarsgård became Hollywood’s ‘It’ boy – an actor whose on-screen menace (read: Pennywise) helped rack up a staggering $700 million at the global box office.
Skarsgård’s cackling clown became something of a sensation, too, and one need only look at the number of Pennywise-inspired Halloween costumes and memes for evidence of that. All of this only lumps yet more pressure on It: Chapter Two, though, what with Skarsgård expected to reprise as Stephen King’s abomination next year. Only this time, there’s a twist: barring a handful of flashbacks, Pennywise will be terrorizing an entirely new cast in the adult Losers’ Club, and such a change of pace presents its own unique challenges, as Bill Skarsgård revealed to Collider.
But first, the actor looked back on a pretty historic 12 months for Pennywise the Clown:
Yeah, it’s weird. It’s a bit strange ‘cause it’s a very different thing now. The first time I did it, nobody knew what I would do with it, so it was just all of this expectation. I didn’t know if it would work, or if people would respond to it. There was a lot of that worry going on about it. But that was also cool ‘cause I was just doing my thing and nobody knew what that was or could tell me how I should do it. I was like, ‘I’m gonna distance myself from the Tim Curry performance, and then come up with some weird stuff, myself.’ I worked really closely with Andy [Muschietti], the director. This time around, because the movie became such a phenomenon, it’s almost like I’m re-adapting myself.
Skarsgård then spoke a little more about what it was like to welcome the likes of Jessica Chastain (Beverly Marsh), James McAvoy (Bill Denbrough) and Bill Hader (Richie Tozier) to Derry, Maine 27 years after the fact.
But off camera, I get to hang out with the entire adult cast now. It’s weird and it’s surreal because some of them are really big stars and they’re coming in to your thing. They’re stepping into the thing that me and Andy and the kids did. They’re joining the band, in a way. They’re excited, and I just had a lot of fun hanging out with all of them. It’s going to be a very different shooting experience with all adults, for sure, but it will be fun. They’re all really cool and talented people, so I think they will bring a lot to the table.
Filming on It: Chapter Two continues apace ahead of the sequel’s expected launch next September. It’s also reserved a place at San Diego Comic-Con, where the Powers That Be over at New Line are plotting their second annual ScareDiego thanks to Chapter Two and Corin Hardy’s The Nun.