by Gill Pringle and Chris Daniel
The son of Stellan and brother of Alexander, Bill Skargard landed the plum role of Pennywise in fellow Swede’s Andy Muschietti’s highly anticipated feature film adaptation of Stephen King’s IT. The exhilaration of landing the dream role for an actor turned into nightmares after the cameras stopped rolling.
“I did have 10 full days of this exorcism of nightmares of Pennywise. Pretty much every night there was nightmares. It wasn’t like Pennywise versus me, it was me being Pennywise, people looking at me and I’m like, ‘they are not allowed to see me right here’. There was this paranoia, very weird dreams. But, there was truly a way of my subconscious to process what I’ve been going through in just all these really intense weird dreams.”
Skarsgard describes his role of Pennywise as physically exhausting and mentally challenging. “It’s a thing where… it’s like being in a really destructive relationship. That’s what it is for an actor to have, a relationship with a character. Pennywise and Bill are in a very destructive relationship,” Skarsgard comments, interestingly adopting the third person.
“When you’ve gotten out of it, it’s like ‘Oh my god, that was such a destructive relationship’. It could be with your boss, it could be with your lover, whatever it is. And then once you’re out of it, you’re like ‘Wow, I’m glad I’m out of it’. It wasn’t exactly like that, because I really enjoyed the pluses of making this film, but it’s so intense.”
The obvious question is whether Tim Curry’s performance in the 1990 mini-series influenced the young actor? “I did watch it right before I booked the job. I saw the more famous scenes and I kind of saw what that was to make sure I didn’t do that. For me, obviously, Tim Curry’s performance is his take on the character. I needed to make something that is my own. It was also important to me to make it for people that are big fans of the original and Tim Curry’s Pennywise to go see this and say, ‘Oh, I also like this’. It’s apples and oranges. Two different takes and two different versions, I do think you could appreciate both of them.”
And what’s Bill Skarsgard’s take on whether the clown exists or now? “The existence of IT is actually based off of children’s imagination. Does he exist without the children? It’s up to interpretation but I think not. I think he is a figment of children’s imagination and as long as children believe in the story and the world, that feeds him into existing. It’s a very abstract, almost philosophical way of looking at it.”
IT is in cinemas on September 7, 2017
