It and It Chapter Two star Bill Skarsgård spoke with host Josh Horowitz on his Happy Sad Confused podcast and shared new details about Max’s upcoming series It: Welcome to Derry. The actor, who will be reprising his role as Pennywise and will also executive produce the series, promised that Stephen King‘s infamous dancing clown will be as intense and vicious as audiences remember. Fans will recall Pennywise’s many violent escapades in King’s popular bestselling novel and the film adaptations, including tearing off young Georgie’s arm and brutally eating other children, often after manipulating them into trusting the shapeshifting clown. According to Skarsgård, Pennywise (and the horror aspect in general) will still be “pretty hardcore” in the shift from film to series.
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The actor double-downed on the R-rated tone of the prequel series when Horowitz joked that It: Welcome to Derry is “not the G-rated Pennywise.” “Skarsgård said, “No. No. That would be a no.”
The actor recently starred as another iconic horror monster, Count Orlok, in Robert Eggers’ Nosferatu. The Gothic horror film had a tremendous debut over Christmas Day and its subsequent weekend, becoming the biggest Christmas premiere for a genre film, dethroning Robert Rodriguez’s 1998 sci-fi horror The Faculty. Skarsgård told Horowitz that he initially felt his journey with Pennywise was complete following the films and that Nosferatu had served as “the nail in the coffin on my monster roles — pun intended.”
However, his relationships with It director Andy Muschietti and producer Barbara Muschietti (whom he described as “very close friends, family even”) made Skarsgård reconsider revisiting his old buddy Pennywise. The Muschiettis are executive producing It: Welcome to Derry alongside Skarsgård, with Andy set to direct four of the prequel series episodes.
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“It was fun,” Skarsgård said when discussing working on It: Welcome to Derry. “I enjoyed it more than I thought I would, actually, and there’s parts of it where we got to explore sides of old Pennywise that we haven’t seen, you know? And that’s fun. I remembered how much I enjoy working with Andy and we do have a lot of fun together. I think there’s some cool stuff in there that we haven’t seen that I’m excited for the people to watch and enjoy hopefully.”
Skarsgård added that he can slide back into Pennywise’s voice with ease, saying, “Yeah, he’s always there.”
It: Welcome to Derry will premiere on Max in 2025. The series will star the previously announced Madeleine Stowe, Stephen Rider Taylour Paige, Jovan Adepo, Chris Chalk, and James Remar. Jason Fuchs (Argylle) and Brad Caleb Kane (Extinction) serve as co-showrunners.
It (2017) is available to stream on Max.
