Tim Curry’s portrayal of the serial killer clown in 1990’s IT adaptation is remembered by many of us (myself included) because it gave quite a bit of nightmares for years to come.
The new Pennywise actor, Bill Skarsgård, was said to have traumatized children while filming this year’s IT movie adaptation, but apparently, he might not be the only one.
Tim Curry revealed he did scare a child actor – though his story is a little funnier (video below):
“I have a lot of sympathy for child actors. Most of them don’t know what the hell they’re doing there.There was a point in IT, at the beginning of the movie, this little kid called Georgie is sailing his boat down the gutter and it goes down the drain, and Pennywise grabs it. And Georgie puts his hand down the drain and I grab it and I suggest that he joins me, and say, ‘Down here, you’ll float.’ And he stopped and said, ‘Tim, you’re scaring me.’ I said, ‘Gee, I’m so sorry, but that’s what I’m supposed to be doing.'”
When pressed about whether or not the kid had to go to years of therapy, Curry jokingly responded:
“I sure hope so.”
You can check out the full video below – and he even gets into character as Pennywise briefly:
Curry has revealed he’s excited for Skarsgård’s portrayal of the character:
“Well, I like [Bill] Skarsgard very much, I think he’s very clever. It’ll be interesting what sort of clown face he puts on, because it’s not an obvious clown face at all. I’ve seen the trailer and you can’t really see him at all. So I’m fascinated to see it. He’s very good.”
Skarsgård has said that his performance shouldn’t be compared to Curry’s:
“It was always important for me to reinvent It and reinterpret It in a different way. I sort of grew up with the Tim performance and I was very familiar with it and a huge fan as an actor, so my process of preparing for the role was, “okay this needs to be different” and I think we did that, I think this Pennywise is different and they can stand alone – there’s no need to compare them as you can appreciate both but it was important to me to do something new and something original with the take on the character.”
The new IT film is currently playing in theaters everywhere.