Bill Skarsgard reveals how he became Pennywise the clown for Steven King’s It movie

SWEDISH actor Bill Skarsgard deliberately steered clear of Tim Curry’s version and Heath Ledger’s Joker, instead mining his own fears to play Pennywise the Dancing Clown in It.

SWEDISH actor Bill Skarsgard had some very big clown shoes to fill when he signed on to play the evil shapeshifting Pennywise in the eagerly anticipated movie version of Steven King’s terrifying novel, It.

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Tim Curry had aced the role in the 1990 miniseries, traumatising a generation of children, so Skarsgard was adamant his take would be very different.

He reflects on the weight of expectation, Heath Ledger’s Joker and the challenges of becoming evil incarnate.

HOW did you feel when the It trailer became the most viewed ever?

Surprised and shocked. I don’t think anybody anticipated that the trailer would have that wide a response. I knew people were excited about the film and there was a lot of interest in it but I had no idea how much. At the same time, it’s a trailer so I just hope the film lives up to it as well and that people go see it. I have seen the film, I am happy with it and think it’s really good and does a lot of justice to the source material novel and think and hope that fans will like it.

Did you freak yourself out when you watched the final film?

I think I am actually way too self-conscious to be scared of myself. The illusion doesn’t really work any more for me. I am way too familiar with Pennywise at this point.

Tim Curry famously played Pennywise in the 1990 miniseries — were you trying to shy away from that and go back to the book for your interpretation?

I worked with director Andy Muschietti to make it a very different take from Tim Curry’s. I never saw the point in trying to do a new adaptation of a movie and do it similarly to the first one. We wanted to reinvent the character and I think we did.

As an actor, how do you go about becoming Pennywise, the very embodiment of fear and evil?

Just booking the job was not the easiest. There were a lot of people who had to be convinced that I was the right person for the job so there were a lot of auditions and I had an initial take on what the character might be like. Once I got the job my first step was to intellectualise who the character was so I thoroughly read the novel and took notes and marked pages that helped my understand what the character was and what his motivations were. And the third stage was the embodiment of him, and that came from putting the make-up on and seeing how my face reacted to it and moved. And the final step was to actually shoot it. It’s funny — and I feel this on pretty much any movie I have ever done — on the last day of shooting it’s ‘ohhh, NOW I have figured out the character’. That’s kind of how it’s supposed to be because you are figuring out the character as you are playing him.

Pennywise takes on the form of the things we fear the most — did you find yourself mining your own fears to portray that? And how would he appear for you?

My personal fears are not clearly described — like I am not scared of mummies or ghosts or anything in particular. An It embodying something would probably be much more personal than I would like to discuss. But it’s also part of who the character is — it feeds off children because their fears tend to be more easily portrayed. Kids are scared of a movie they have seen or a ghost story they have heard. And a big part is their own parents, being scared of them or grown-ups or whatever.

How important was it to have an element of humour in there, however twisted it might be?

It was very important for me. I wanted it that Pennywise had humour for himself, but that the audience wouldn’t find it funny. So I wanted the humour to be that Pennywise finds the most grotesque and evil things hilarious but I never wanted the audience to laugh or smile with him. I wanted them to be repulsed by his humour. When he is in control, he’s having a lot of fun — he tend to play with his food, so to speak — but it obviously shouldn’t be enjoyable for the kids in the movie or the audience watching it.

Bill Skarsgard is a huge Heath Ledger fan, but wanted Pennywise to be very different from The Joker.

There are elements of Heath Ledger’s Joker in that mix of humour and terror — and of course the clown make-up — was that an influence in any way?

That was an amazing performance, but I deliberately tried to make mine different because it’s such a clear, iconic performance so I wanted to stray away from it as far as possible. But Heath as an actor has always been an inspiration to me, like so many great character actors have been. I was adamant to do as much of my own thing as possible.

How does it feel to know that if you traumatise a generation of kids in the same way that Halloween or Friday the 13th did, you’ll have done a really good job?

It’s a strange thing to come to terms with — that if I really succeed with this, people will have nightmares about this character for a really long time. Ultimately it’s all just fun and games — we do seek out fears — and the world is a much more terrifying place than Pennywise can ever be. I know that Tim Curry’s performance, I have close friends who were completely traumatised by it. An older sister or brother forced them to watch it when they were way too young and it traumatised them. I don’t think this movie should be watched by someone of that age. But who knows? There might be an entire generation …

Bill Skarsgard (centre) with actor brothers Gustaf (left) and Alexander, arrive for yesterday’s world premiere of It in Hollywood. Picture: AFP PHOTO / Robyn Beck

Did you freak out the actual kids on the movie and try to keep your distance to maintain that fear?

We did have a separation so the kids wouldn’t become too comfortable with me being around until we started shooting. But then the kids were so mature and smart that pretty early on they understood that this was just pretend and Pennywise isn’t real and we just worked together professionally to make the scenes as good as they could be. And I think we did. The kids are such a huge asset to the film and part of the reason it works is because of how good the chemistry between them all is.

IT OPENS TODAY