Last year, audiences were made believers when actor Bill Skarsgard brought the terrifying Pennywise the Dancing Clown to life in the Andy Muschietti-directed adaptation of the Stephen King novel IT. This was a movie that had a lot going against it. Not only was the novel beloved, but a lot of audiences looked fondly back on the 1990 TV movie, which starred Tim Curry as Pennywise.

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Because of this, a lot of folks already had it in their head that Curry’s take could not be beaten. Luckily for us, Skarsgard’s take was every bit as memorable in its own right. But how did Skarsgard actually play the character? In the recent Blu-ray release, Skarsgard revealed that he wasn’t just playing a clown, but was pretty much an ENTITY playing a clown.

“It mentions in the novel somewhere, Pennywise is IT’s favorite form. He really enjoys doing the clown, so that was something that I wanted to play up as well, that he’s having fun while he’s doing this… You’re playing an entity that’s playing a clown, so it’s like these kinds of steps, and I wanted to get that into the character that there’s kind of glitches almost. That it’s not just a clown, it’s something off. Something weirder. Something even more sinister. I wanted to create this feeling that you never know what’s going to happen the clown’s around.”

This is one aspect that Skarsgard really capitalized on. If you’ll recall in the film, in the scene in that abandoned house, he seemed to have a good time playing up the creep factor as he pretended to bite off Eddie’s fingers. In this take, he’s not just playing a clown, but is purposely playing the clown ironically, which is a clever little twist.

What did you think of Skarsgard’s performance in IT? Let us know down below!

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SOURCE: IT Blu-ray (via CinemaBlend)