IT Star Reveals Pennywise Ruined Clowns for Her

The past few years have brought Stephen King’s IT back into the mainstream, with the help of a two-movie film adaptation courtesy of director Andy Muschietti. Both IT and IT: Chapter Two had no storage of terrifying moments, especially with regards to the villainous clown, Pennywise. Pennywise undoubtedly had an effect on viewers of the franchise — including one of its stars. Sophia Lillis, who played the younger version of Beverly Marsh, detailed how working on the franchise changed her perspective on clowns, which she previously “had no preference” of.

“Well, I can’t think about clowns and then not think about, you know, Pennywise cause that was a good section of my life,” Lillis told IMDb’s That Scene with Dan Patrick podcast. “I mean, I was going into high school. Yeah, I don’t know if it ruined clowns for me. Maybe it did, I think that’s what happened. It kind of ruined clowns for me. And that’s why the scenes stood out to me… just everything your character is going through is ramped up and personified. And she has her first real encounter with Pennywise. So you’re doing your scene for the first time, and you’ve got blood coming out of the sink… like how do you approach that?! Then you’re thinking ‘Okay, my dad can’t see this blood! I have to act like he should be seeing this blood! I have it all over me and I’ve got to be scared to death because there’s something in the sink!’”

“Acting’s hard, but when you’re there in that scene and you actually see the whole room covered in blood, you have the materials you need to be scared,” Lillis continued. “So it wasn’t that hard being scared.”

While the two IT films largely told King’s original story, some have wondered if the success of the franchise could lead to another follow-up film involving Pennywise.

“I’m sure there’s interest [in a sequel or spinoff],” Gary Dauberman, who wrote both IT films, explained in a previous interview. “But I gotta say, we want to be respectful to the material of the book. I don’t think anybody’s over there, in fact I know there’s no one over there going ‘Hey, let’s definitely do this and we could tell this story of what happened at the beaver trapping camp,’ or whatever.”

“To answer your question I think there is room to build on the mythology of IT because IT has been around from the beginning of time, but I don’t know if there are any plans for it,” Dauberman added. “I was just very happy to tackle the book.”