Bill Skarsgård traumatised kids as Pennywise on the set of Stephen King's It
Movies might be all make believe, but try telling that to some of the young extras on the set of the new version of Stephen King’s ‘It’.
Swedish actor Bill Skarsgård has revealed how he might well have caused a few nightmares during filming, what with his scary clown get-up.
In a chat between Bill Skarsgård and his actor brother Alexander in Interview magazine, he’s explained the dilemma between being scary for the camera and scaring the kids.
“It’s a really weird thing to go, ‘If I succeed at doing what I’m trying to do with this character, I’ll traumatize kids’,” he said.
“On set, I wasn’t very friendly or goofy. I tried to maintain some sort of weirdness about the character, at least when I was in all the makeup.
“At one point, they set up this entire scene, and these kids come in, and none of them have seen me yet. Their parents have brought them in, these little extras, right? And then I come out as Pennywise, and these kids – young, normal kids – I saw the reaction that they had.
“Some of them were really intrigued, but some couldn’t look at me, and some were shaking. This one kid started crying. He started to cry and the director yelled, ‘Action!’ And when they say ‘action’, I am completely in character.
“So some of these kids got terrified and started to cry in the middle of the take, and then I realized, ‘Holy sh*t. What am I doing? What is this? This is horrible’.
“But then we cut, and obviously I was all, ‘Hey, I’m sorry. This is pretend’.”
Skarsgård also talked about the legacy involved in the first iteration of King’s book, the horror mini-series which saw Tim Curry take on the role of the shapeshifting predator.
“I remember It being the scariest thing that existed for a kid. There were other horror films, like ‘Friday the 13th’ or ‘Halloween’, but this was the really scary one because it was children and a clown. So many people go, ‘That film really destroyed my childhood,’ or, ‘I hated clowns after that.’ Hopefully, there will be a lot of 10-year-olds who will be traumatized forever based on my performance [laughs].”
Sounds like there already are.
Also starring Jaeden Lieberher, Jeremy Ray Taylor, Sophia Lillis and Finn Wolfhard, ‘It’ is due out in September.
Read More:
Wonder Woman: 10 differences between movie & comics
Priyanka Chopra wants to play Batgirl
Tom Cruise reveals Top Gun sequel title
