Why Bill Skarsgård was hesitant to play Pennywise in HBO’s It: Welcome To Derry

Bill Skarsgård returns to Derry, Maine to terrorize some kids in “It: Welcome to Derry,” the upcoming series based on the recent film adaptation of Stephen King’s “It,” which promises to deliver not only another terrifying tale of a killer clown, but A fitting origin story for Skargård’s Pennywise the Clown.

This is excellent news for everyone who was super scared back in 2017 when Skarsgård first played Pennywise, as he was a big part of the reason this movie was such a success. It seemed obvious that Skarsgård would reprise his role in the TV show as it is the only piece of connective tissue between the previous series and the original story, but the actor was originally very reluctant to return.

In the November 2025 issue of SFX Magazineco-creator and executive producer Andy Muschietti shared that Skarsgard struggled to return to Derry. “I think he was a little hesitant at first to play it again because it’s something he’s done in the past,” Andy Muschietti explained. “Also, at that point, when we started talking about the series as something real and tangible, he played a lot of very dark characters, and he was a little hesitant to delve into it again.” “Because, obviously, for someone who takes his work and his art as seriously as he does, living in the head of those characters for so long takes a huge toll,” he explained.

“So he was a little hesitant at first – and then something changed… I think we started again, got into it and discussed all the virtues of this new story, and he decided to do it,” Muschietti continued.

It’s understandable that Skarsgård would have doubts about playing Pennywise again, considering he’s not only gotten a lot of villainous roles in the years since It, but specifically given that Skarsgård also… I recently played another huge cinematic monster in Count Orlok In “Nosferatu”.

According to Muschietti’s sister, Barbara, who co-created and executive produced the show, she explained that they had talked about adding more exploration of Bob Gray to the “It” and later “Welcome to Derry” films. According to the producer, “We also discussed making a third movie about Bob Gray before It took him over and he became Pennywise.”

We don’t know much about him, other than that he is an interdimensional being billions of years old who supposedly visited other planets before arriving on Earth. Although we don’t expect to learn more about the entity in Welcome to Derry, it looks like we’ll learn more about the man who took over when he became Pennywise. We learned about Bob Gray in “It: Chapter Two,” a human clown who looks a lot like Pennywise without makeup, but we don’t know much about his story, at least not yet.

As for Skarsgård, the actor has spoken about it in the past How much did Pennywise change his life? How much he invested in this role, and how much he frightened his co-star children. It is understandable not to want to repeat himself. However, it won’t be the same without Skarsgård, so it’s great news that he was convinced to return after all.