“My god I’m traumatising this child”: When Bill Skarsgård opened up on becoming Pennywise in Stephen King’s IT

Pennywise is a character made popular by Stephen King's horror novel IT. He is a clown who targets children and murders them. Bill Skarsgård played the clown in the 2017 horror film IT, directed by Andy Muschietti. Both his performance and the film met with positive critical response.

During the promotions in 2017, Skarsgård spoke about becoming the character of Pennywise. He said that at one point during the shoot, the actor went into a self-reflective mood and said with a realization:

"My god I’m traumatising this child"

Let us look into what exactly he said in the interview.

When Bill Skarsgård spoke about playing Pennywise in IT

Bill Skarsgård played Pennywise in the 2017 film IT. Prior to its release, the actor appeared on Jimmy Kimmel's talk show, where he spoke about playing the killer clown. When Jimmy asked him if the kids on set were scared of him, Bill said:

"When you work with kids, like actors, you never know if they are gonna be game or not. Some kids, that are actors, that have this kind of raw talent and some of them are like professional actors at 12 years of age. You didn't know going into it, but they are all like really professional actors."

Bill further spoke about his first scene with Jack Dylan Grazer as Edward Kaspbrak, aka Eddie. He said that it was a "really intense scene" where he approaches Eddie, and he is drooling all over him. He said:

"We sort of block it briefly without doing really emotion into it. Then they yell 'action' and I do it and I'm doing this clown thing and I'm screaming and I'm like...coz part of Pennywise is that he hates the kids and there's so much anger."

Kimmel intercepts and says, "most clowns do." Bill then laughs and continues:

"And then I approach him and scream in his face, and we are doing this scene and he's crying and gagging and doing this whole thing, and I'm like back of my head as we are shooting, I'm like 'oh my god I'm traumatising this child. Like, what am I doing you know and then he said 'cut' and I go 'Are you okay Jack?' He goes 'I love what you are doing with your character.'"

More about IT franchise

IT is adapted from Stephen King's namesake horror book published in 1986. The film was the first of the two-part storyline and was released on September 8, 2017, by Warner Bros. Pictures. The film was a critical success and earned $704.2 million at the box office.

Its sequel, IT Chapter Two, covers the remaining part of the book. The storyline takes place 27 years after the events of the first film. The Losers Club has grown up and is prepared to stop the clown one final time. Written by Gary Dauberman, Chase Palmer, and Cary Fukunaga, the film was produced by Roy Lee, Dan Lin, and Barbara Muschietti. The film was released in September 2017, and its sequel in 2019. Bill played Pennywise in both films. A prequel television series, IT: Welcome to Derry will premiere on HBO sometime in 2025.