IT Star Says He Thought He Was “Done” With Pennywise After Nosferatu

Pennywise may be one of Bill Skarsgård’s most notable roles, but the It star thought he was done with the killer clown after playing another horror creature: Count Orlok in Nosferatu. During an appearance on the Happy Sad Confused podcast (via Deadline), Skarsgård said that he felt like he was “done” with playing monsters while filming Nosferatu — but things changed when he learned more about the upcoming It prequel, Welcome to Derry.

“I felt like I was done with it in a way,” Skarsgård said about playing monsters. “It was also because I was shooting this, I was doing Orlok, and to me it just felt like, “OK, this is the. nail in the coffin on my monster roles.’ Pun intended. So, I did feel like I was kind of over it and wanted to do different things. And of course, the Pennywise thing as well, I’ve been quite defined by it.”

He then explained that “things changed” when he saw the take on the It prequel that producers Andy and Barbara Muschietti had come up with.

[RELATED: Nosferatu Director Explains Orlok’s Impressive Mustache (And It Makes Sense)]

“And I love them, they’re very close friends, family even,” he said. “I’m the godfather of his son. So, I love them. So, I was like, ‘All right, let’s bring him back.’”

It was announced back in May 2024 that Skarsgård will reprise his role as Pennywise for HBO’s It: Welcome to Derry, which is set to debut on the network sometime in 2025. The series, based on Stephen King’s 1986 novel It, will serve as a prequel to 2017’s It and 2019’s It: Chapter Two. While we don’t know exact details about the series just yet, Skarsgård has teased that the series and Pennywise will be “pretty hardcore”. In addition to Skarsgård, the series will star Madeleine Stowe, Stephen Rider, Taylour Paige, Jovan Adepo, Chris Chalk, and James Remar.

As for Skarsgård, returning to Pennywise might end up being a little easier in some respects than his turn as Nosferatu’s Orlok. The actor recently revealed just how intense shooting the film’s final scene was — and how gross.

“Everything is like, I’m covered in latex, full body,” he said. “The only surface of me is my eyeballs and the soles of my feet. That was the only thing. Everything was covered. And when we were doing the finale, the final moment of the movie, we did 30 takes of it. Without spoiling it, it’s a lot of physical performance. So, you’re completely exhausted, and you’re sweating through. What started happening, because there was nowhere for the sweat to escape, it just created this giant bubble on my stomach. It started growing like a tumor. And then between takes, they had to pierce it. And then on top of that, fake blood and sweat and saliva. It was a gory mess.”

It: Welcome to Derry is expected to debut on HBO sometime this year. Nosferatu is in theaters now.