Bill Skarsgard Calls Pennywise “Angrier and Scarier” in IT CHAPTER TWO

In Stephen King’s IT, an evil entity lurks the small town of Derry, Maine for generations, emerging every 27 years to terrorize the community and feed on the fear of its young residents. In 2017’s adaptation of the novel, audiences saw a group of friends, dubbed the Losers’ Club, banding together to confront the entity once and for all. Unfortunately, IT CHAPTER TWO will reveal that their plan wasn’t as effective as they had hoped, with the creature once again targeting the town. Bill Skarsgard, who plays Pennywise the Dancing Clown in the films, teases that the villain has only grown more dangerous since we last saw him.

“He’s scarier and he’s angrier,” Skarsgard shared with Entertainment Weekly. “There’s a couple of very brutal things in the film.”

The effectiveness of IT‘s scares led to it becoming one of the biggest horror hits of the year, going on to earn more than $700 million worldwide. Skarsgard’s comments echo what the screenwriter said about the endeavor, with Gary Dauberman previously teasing the terror in store for the audience.

When speaking with The Hollywood Reporter, Dauberman confirmed the sequel is “definitely bloodier than the first and it is just as scary, if not scarier. The two movies feel like a complete whole. This feels like a natural progression and extension of the first.”

Skarsgard previously detailed that it was Pennywise’s confrontation with the Losers’ Club that led towards the entity being more terrifying.

“He’s been doing this forever really, so he doesn’t change in the sense that you would look differently,” Skarsgard revealed to Entertainment Weekly. “He looks however he wants to look for any particular prey at the time, but I do think there’s a change.”

While he might not have gone through a drastic physical change, except for the injuries he suffered at the hands of the Losers’ Club, he has emotionally changed, having now experienced the fear that he has been inflicting on others.

“The arc of the first movie is that he, for the first time, experiences fear himself,” Skarsgard noted. “His last line — ‘Fear…’ — is him experiencing it for the first time, and he’s sort of shocked and perplexed and surprised. Like, what is this?”

Having gone undiscovered for centuries, the entity has never had anything to fear. Not only did his encounters with the Losers’ Club alter his own emotional state, but also impacted how he can more effectively terrorize his victims.

“He’s inflicted fear on his prey, and he’s very focused on fear, but he’s never experienced it himself,” the actor noted. “Now he’s experienced something that he has been inflicting on others and … there’s a shift leading into the second movie.”

IT CHAPTER TWO lands in theaters on September 6th.

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