SPOILER WARNING: The following article contains spoilers for the first six episodes of IT: Welcome To Derry. If you have not yet watched, do yourself a favor and take advantage of your HBO Max subscription before proceeding!
Reflecting on the constant demand for instant gratification in 21st century society, the HBO series IT: Welcome To Derry executed a big gamble in its on-going first season. While fans around the world hungered for the return of Bill Skarsgård as Pennywise The Dancing Clown, the show held off on showcasing its titular entity’s most notorious form until the fifth episode of its eight episode run… which resulted in a fair amount of frustrated chatter on social media. The reason for this approach has been the subject of much discussion, with filmmakers in interviews putting a strong emphasis on exploring IT’s shapeshifting abilities, but the true explanation at the end of the day is that it required some real convincing in order to get Skarsgård to reprise his most beloved character.
So, what was it that eventually led the acclaimed actor to say yes to IT: Welcome To Derry? Answering that question is the main subject of this edition of The King Beat, and it comes courtesy of an in-depth conversation I had this week with series co-creator/co-showrunner Jason Fuchs. The series went through a great deal of development before Skarsgård was a firm “yes,” and he was ultimately attracted to two key opportunities. There’s a whole lot to discuss, so let’s dig in!
IT: Welcome To Derry’s Creators Always Understood That The Show Wouldn’t Work Without Bill Skarsgård As Pennywise
It was about three years ago that IT: Welcome To Derry began to get its feet under it, with showrunners officially hired in November 2022 and the show getting the green light from HBO Max in March 2023… but it was around that same time that doubt was sewn regarding the chance of seeing Bill Skarsgård return as Pennywise. The actor was asked at the time if he was involved with the project, and his comment was very non-committal – simply saying that he was anticipating seeing what the creatives came up with.
Writing about those comments at the time, I penned a headline expressing my worry about what his lack of involvement meant for the prospects of the show… and I was certainly far from alone in that concern. Creatives behind the project – including co-creators Andy and Barbara Muschietti – understood how incredibly vital it was to have him involved, and that meant telling a story that spoke to him as an ever-evolving artist. Jason Fuchs explained,
The journey of Bill coming to this show was not a foregone conclusion. Bill obviously always wants to work with Andy and Barbara. Bill loves the world of this and loves the character, but he had, to his credit, felt like he had done the thing. He played this character, he delivered two iconic performances. And so it was not as simple as, 'Hey, we're doing a an IT prequel series, come play Pennywise.' It was, 'What is different about the character this time? What is there that I haven't been able to already achieve with this character?'
Career-wise, Bill Skarsgård is in what appears to be a comfortable place (at present, he is less than a year removed from his widely acclaimed turn as the eponymous monster in writer/director Robert Eggers’ Nosferatu), and that put him in a place to have strong artistic integrity in negotiations regarding IT: Welcome To Derry: If the series wasn’t going to give him anything new to explore as Pennywise beyond what he had already done in IT: Chapter One and IT: Chapter Two, he wasn’t particularly interested in signing on.
As Jason Fuchs noted, it was a circumstance that bred a creative challenge for him, co-showrunner Brad Caleb Kane, the producers and the writer’s room. It was firmly understood that the project couldn’t properly exist if it didn’t have the canon’s most exciting character, and thus, there was a very specific goal in the work developing the series:
It set a high bar for us as creators, as writers, executive producers. How do we generate something that feels worthy of Bill returning to this role? And that was the challenge from the start. And when we got the 'Yes' from Bill, it felt like a big accomplishment because without him, there was no Welcome To Derry. We had no illusions about that.
Fortunately, the creatives had an ace up their sleeve: the identity of Bob Gray.
We’ll Soon Meet Bob Gray In IT: Welcome To Derry, And He Was Key In Selling Bill Skarsgård On The Show
In the actual text of Stephen King’s IT, the identity of Bob Gray is a bit of a mystery. The name is mentioned four times in the book, with Pennywise twice identifying himself with that moniker and Mrs. Kersh explaining that he was her father as she has tea with the adult Beverly Marsh. In the making of IT: Welcome To Derry Season 1, that vagueness was not only used as a creative opportunity, but one that helped convince Bill Skarsgård to sign on.
I asked Jason Fuchs what it was that turned the actor’s “maybe” into a “yes,” and he highlighted revelations about Bob Gray as a key part of the decision:
I think what ultimately sold him was the elements that you're seeing now in episodes six, seven, and eight. I think he was excited about playing the IT manifestation of Pennywise. I think he was really, really excited about getting to play Bob Gray, the very human man, the real life – at least real life in-canon – clown who IT had encountered in 1908, as we see at the top of episode seven, and whose lives were forever both changed by that encounter.
Audiences previously got to see Bob Gray very briefly in IT: Chapter Two, as Jessica Chastain’s Bev Marsh has a vision of him applying his clown makeup while revising her childhood home, but it’s in IT: Welcome To Derry Episode 6 ("In the Name of the Father") that we start to see more of Pennywise’s “human” side. The show unleashes a bloody twist involving Madeleine Stowe's Ingrid Kersh, who has spent decades acting as a sort of familiar to Pennywise so that she can reunite with her lost dad, and we’ll see Skarsgård further explore that relationship in the two episodes set to debut in the next couple weeks. Fuchs teased,
It was really an opportunity to play that other role, to explore what Bob Gray was like, what that relationship with his daughter was. I think, you know, that scene at the top of seven between Bob and Periwinkle/Ingrid inside his trailer with her act on him, all that's the stuff that I think he was really drawn to.
But the Pennywise/Periwinkle relationship wasn’t the only one that intrigued the actor.
Beyond The Human Side Of Pennywise, IT Contends With Whole New Prey
IT: Welcome To Derry is a treat for Stephen King fans in that it’s a unique, deep exploration of one of the author’s most beloved works, but it’s also an exciting adaptation in terms of canon connectivity. One of the series’ highlights has been the journey of Chris Chalk’s Dick Hallorann, a character who cameos in the book and has been shown to have a rocky relationship with the psychic curse/gift known as The Shining years before becoming the head cook at the Overlook Hotel. It’s a special aspect of the show – and notably, it’s another element that particularly intrigued Bill Skarsgård convinced him to sign on.
IT feasts on fear and is accustomed to prey that is generally helpless to stop it, but the supernatural gifts that Dick possesses make him an exceptional foil. We first got a taste of their interesting dynamic in Episode 3 ("Now You See It") when the soldier is psychically hunting the evil entity from the skies, and the relationship has only escalated since then. Added Fuchs,
The opportunity to portray Bob Gray was the number one thing that drew him back creatively; I think the other thing that was interesting to him was the sort of fresh dynamics that Pennywise, the IT manifestation of Pennywise, had in terms of characters in the show. We've never seen anything like Pennywise's encounters with Dick Hallorann. We've never experienced IT encountering another person with special abilities. That's a different dramatic tenor.
That different dramatic tenor is a big part of the remaining story in IT: Welcome To Derry, and audiences should be very excited for what is on the way. The penultimate episode, "The Black Spot,” will debut on HBO and HBO Max this coming Sunday, December 7, and the finale will air on December 14.
That brings an end to this week’s special edition of The King Beat, but as always, I’ll be back here on CinemaBlend next Thursday with a brand new column exploring the latest happenings in the world of Stephen King.
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