Bill Skarsgård makes a delightfully terrifying Pennywise the Dancing Clown in IT — but apparently, the most terrifying scene didn’t even make the final cut of the remake!
In an interview with Variety‘s Playback podcast, the actor revealed that production filmed a scene set in the early 17th century, showing the origin of Pennywise and his interactions with the founding members of Derry, Maine.
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He teased:
“There’s a scene that we shot that was a flashback scene from the 1600s. Where Pennywise was before ‘Pennywise.’ And we shot it for additional shooting and the scene turned out REALLY, REALLY disturbing. And It’s me … I’m not the clown, I look more like myself.”
The scene, which some theorized could be from an earlier draft of the script by Cary Fukunaga, shows a mother allowing the monster to devour her daughter in exchange for safety.
Skarsgård explained that in this scene, Pennywise didn’t look like the clown the children see, but appeared “incomplete, his flesh pale and translucent, like a half-formed imitation of a human.”
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The 27-year-old didn’t go into much more detail about the scene shot, because we may actually get to see it in Chapter 2 of the Stephen King remake. He continued:
“I’m not gonna spoil what the scene is, because we might use it [in the sequel]. But it’s a very disturbing scene, sort of a backstory for what IT is or where Pennywise came from. … The idea is that IT, the entity, was dormant or resting for thousands of thousands of years and it [the scene] hints on [the founding of Derry].”
Sounds creepy! Whether in the sequel or on the bonus features of the IT Blu-Ray, we hope we’ll get to see Pennywise’s eerie origin story sooner or later…
Take a listen to the actor’s full interview (below).
[Image via Warner Bros..]