It: Welcome to Derry has finally introduced Bill Skarsgård as Pennywise in the series’ fifth episode.
The makers took a long time to bring the dancing clown to the show. But all the delay had a proper explanation, which has finally been given by creators Andy and Barbara Muschietti.
Barbara explained that they tried to plan Pennywise’s appearance very strategically to keep the character’s terror alive.
She told Entertainment Weekly, “We decided that this season Pennywise should be a bit like the shark in Jaws. You really want to be strategic. In both movies it was very important for us to keep the mystery and fear of this character alive.
“We find that familiarity is the enemy of that. So it was important for us to delay the pleasure or the terror as much as we could.”
Showrunner Jason Fuchs believes that there is much more room on television to experiment with ideas compared to film.
“In the movies, there’s only so much room to see the non-Pennywise manifestations of that being,” he says. Because you’re on TV… you get whole episodes where you can explore the other ways it’s going to hurt kids.”
After the first appearance Bill in episode 5 of Welcome to Derry, further teased that fans can now expect him to do all sorts of horrible things that he’s never done before on film.
