Bill Skarsgård, the actor who plays Pennywise in the upcoming remake of Stephen King’s cult horror classic ‘It’, has discussed the ‘traumatising’ effect that his character had on his fellow child actors.

After reports that the first trailer for the movie ‘left audiences screaming‘, the full version then went on to break viewing records. Expectations are high for what the film has in store – no less now that Skarsgård has talked about the impact of his character to the young actors he shared the set with.

“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’,” he told Interview Magazine. “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 make-up. 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.”


He continued: “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’.”

Read more: the funniest reactions to the IT trailer The R-rated film adaptation of King’s 1986 novel is set for release on September 8 this year. Bill Skarsgård stars as Pennywise, following in the footsteps of Tim Curry, who famously portrayed the creepy clown in a popular 1990 TV miniseries.