New Pennywise says IT miniseries is scarier than Halloween & Friday the 13th

June 6th 2017, 3:50pm

Last Updated on August 5, 2021

A few weeks ago we shared a video of Alex Skarsgard being surprised with a picture of his little brother Bill done up in full Pennywise makeup. His reaction of "Aw, how cute" is the furthest thing from my reaction – which was more in the league of "Jesus f*ck, what the Christ is that?!"

But I guess when Pennywise the Dancing Clown is your younger brother maybe all you see is a chubby baby with a rattle dressed up for Halloween. Maybe.

Anyhow, I for one really enjoyed that video because there is something, I don't know, f*cking sweet about seeing such a horrific figure through the eyes of his big brother. Maybe because I am a big brother. Maybe just because it was a funny video.

Either way, I want to keep that ball rolling today by sharing an interview Alex held with his little brother for Interview Magazine. The full interview is a bit too "brothers sharing inside jokes" for my taste, but it's still a joy to read. On top of that Bill does drop a few cool tidbits throughout so I've collected those here.

The most interesting bit to me is Bill talking about the 1990 IT miniseries directed by Tommy Lee Wallace. As you all probably know by now, I am a mega fan of that flick and so hearing new Pennywise spit bullets about the old version is my favorite thing I've read all day.

Unfortunately, he doesn't mention Tim Curry… Sucks, I know.

Bill Skarsgard on the 1990 mini-series IT:

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.

You know, I'm not sure I can argue with Billy Skarsgard there. HALLOWEEN scared me as a kid, for sure, but it was the IT mini-series that terrified me for decades. In a fun side note, Alex then asked Bill how he felt about an all new generation of kids being terrified of him.

Bill Skarsgard on being a living nightmare:

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." 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 shit. What am I doing? What is this? This is horrible.

Ah, good times. Scaring kids is a ton of fun. But along with being a big brother, I'm also an uncle too so go figure I enjoy a little terrorizing in my spare time. They'll live. In fear… Mo-haha.

You can read the full interview between Alex and Bill RIGHT HERE.

After that head over to your social media outlet of choice and let us know what you think of the 1990 IT mini-series on Facebook, Twitter, and/or Instagram!

STEPHEN KING'S IT crawls out the sewers and into our nightmares September 8th.